It is a cliché to say that those with naturally funny bones could simply read from the phone book and have you roaring with laughter. But the super-expressive Jordan Brookes has no need of such props. Nothing beyond studied control of his limber physicality, his flexible features contorting in paroxysms of suffering and his white knuckle grip on the gnawing terror of everyday existence.
Referencing early cinemagoers, who fled terrified at the sight of a train rushing towards them, the former Edinburgh Comedy Award winner is, himself, a juggernaut spectacle of disturbing fascination. Distinctly uncomfortable with his imagination, but hilarious reporting back from it, the quotidian experience of sitting, eating a croissant on a train, while another man stared across him and out the window, sends him into a spiral of agonising self-consciousness in which he questions everything about his mind and body.
Goblin mode isn’t available to Brookes, always painfully aware of being in the world and potentially observed, improvising nimbly with his audience. Yet at one point he seems to divest himself of all human restraint, horrifically possessed by something more beast-like and primal. The kind of memorable, physical set-piece that many wanky clown shows would kill for, it’s nevertheless surrounded by some superb observational stand-up, as he demolishes the idea of adrenalised mothers saving babies trapped under cars and adroitly notes the little strategies that we all employ to surreptitiously clock something in our peripheral vision.
Jordan Brookes: The Part of You That’s Always Screaming, Pleasance Dome, until 30 Aug (not 17), 9.45pm