Thomas Pocket presents: Me (Oscar Jenkyn-Jones)

With this confusingly-named debut effort, Oscar Jenkyn-Jones appears to aim for noble failure. He's apparently indifferent to audience response and practises a high risk, all-or-nothing strain of comedy guaranteed to alienate those whose tastes aren't as refined as his. The problem is that Thomas Pocket presents: Me (Oscar Jenkyn-Jones) is equally likely to dissatisfy punters already kindly predisposed toward awkward, absurdist anti-comedy. His performance is met by a predictable smattering of folded arms and furrowed brows, but too few laughs arise to counter this antipathy.

Of course, for all we know, Jenkyn-Jones delights in tension and disappointment. This would certainly be in keeping with some of the show's more idiosyncratic moments, particularly a premature ending which no one can be sure is genuinely final. So hard is it to differentiate between the shambolic moments that he contrives and those that stem from naivety, inexperience and hubris on his part, that these intentional flaws start to seem like diversions. One could argue that success in absurdist comedy is reliant on the performer having first mastered the basics of stand-up, so that conventions may be meaningfully played with, subverted and broken. Is this peculiar individual guilty of aiming too high too soon? A monologue that Chris Morris would be satisfied with suggests that this may not be the case; Jenkyn-Jones may just be a frustratingly contrary maverick.