Paul Foot - Dissolve

From the word “Greetings”, Paul Foot had us eating out of the palm of his hand – no small feat, as he was offstage when he said it. His opening gambit only leaned further into the striking eccentricity that his quivering, teste-pop-prone voice established – running amok around the raked seating bank while laying the foundations of a brilliantly laboured metaphor, because otherwise “critics will complain there wasn’t enough metaphor”.

A uniquely personal show for Foot, Dissolve details the comedian’s successful search for enlightenment after a 30-year battle with depression. At times, the show is as dark and earnest as this sounds. And at other times, it’s a blissfully light but shockingly thorough excavation of the tennis-themed romantic-comedy cinema genre, which peaked with a surprising number of releases – two – in the year 2004.

Foot balances Nanette-level gravity against Boosh-comparable abstraction while somehow doing away with the emotional rollercoaster’s usual queasiness. He has the confidence and calm of someone utterly relieved of anxiety and uses them to deliver a pitch-perfect show.