one4review | On 17, Aug 2026

Brookes checks in a few times during the show to ask if he ‘seems like a person’. And he does, but the emphasis is on ‘seems’. There is a sense that his presence on stage is a continual performance, mirroring, reflecting, masking in response to the audience, continually creating his self. Enigmatic, cipher, a little bit alien. Still playing with how weird he can make it without entire alienation. Still making you wonder, as you’re laughing, why on earth this is funny. Still using a raised eyebrow and his plastic face to hold a room in stitches or in silence, at his whim. Still a bit offbeat, a bit weird, and weirdly funny.

The intense self-awareness is a theme of the show, and it permeates every aspect: movements, words, structure, even the nature of the comedy (which is croissants and absurdism). There’s a questioning of who’s looking and who can see, and how people respond to being seen. Brookes is a chameleon, changing not with the environment but with eyelines. There’s sincerity in the yelling about a phone out during the show, but the sense of overt performativity remains.

The show is funny – plenty of huge laughs alongside the discomfited shrieks. It’s like being tickled: laughing, but also eventually begging it to stop. Brooke’s comedy is scalpel wielded with intense skill: relishing, revelling in pushing the audience to the limit of comfort but not beyond, and able to do it with a huge audience. This is a show that will appeal as much to nerdy comedy geeks who get as much fun out of thinking about it afterwards (as evidenced by this review), as to those who enjoy being intelligently and inventively entertained in the moment. Brookes is a master of his craft.

Reviewed by Laura
Pleasance Dome
Until 30th (not 17th)