The sun and the moon. This and that. Now and then. Nostalgia vs being present. These are pretty big fish to be frying over an hour’s stand up. But Li Jin Hao, the Fringe’s 2024 Best Newcomer, has quickly established himself as the comedy world’s gnostic, and this type of ethereal imagistic canoodling is his stock in trade. If he can’t pull it off, who can?
It’s almost all here. There’s a weighty structure at work that means Li is on anything but autopilot – three sections that link the sun’s relationship to the moon (gravity, distance, time) and the different mental frames of reference that follow. The jokes, really, are top class. Some are circles of meaning that refer endlessly back to themselves. Some are more linear, but made entirely of a series of toppers that spring from a tiny thought. Some are little more than a finely honed turn of phrase. All of it’s performed with a finesse that combines the distance of performing in a second language with the presence of knowing exactly how to use that language as a tool.
But there are moments where Li’s tight grip on subtlety gets lost and thudding whimsy slips out. And one can’t shake the thought that those exquisite images that feel like symbols of life itself when sat in those hard Pleasance seats, like church pews, seem like flimsy paper lanterns when remembered in the hours after. In a sense, it’s the question Li is asking writ large: are we in the moment or do we need some stodge to life? I wanted a bit more potato to chew on.
Li Jin Hao: Falling From a Moon, Pleasance Courtyard, until 30 Aug, 8pm