Kim Noble, Soho Theatre

‘'You must see this show!” “You must not go to this show!” Faced with those exhortations from friends and colleagues who had already seen (and been quite shocked by) it, I of course go to Kim Noble Will Die at the Soho Theatre. I was trepidatious because they told me it includes film of him consuming dog food, vomiting, self-harming and doing an awful lot of ejaculating - not my idea of a chucklesome evening. But Kim Noble was once half of the award-winning, darkly surreal duo Noble and Silver (with Stuart Silver), who had several years of success at the Edinburgh Fringe, and this is his first live show in five years.

You know you’re in for a weird evening when Noble comes on stage unannounced as the audience is filing in and he selects women to whom he gives sample jars that we are later told are filled with his ejaculate. Dressed in odd shoes, an ill-fitting Superman costume and bald cap, Noble looks like the kind of misfit you now routinely see on Britain’s streets as successive governments’ cost-cutting scare-in-the-community programmes reach their logical conclusion of "more out than in".

This much we know: Noble suffered a breakdown in 2004 and was diagnosed as suffering from manic depression; he has said in interviews the starting point of this show was the suicide he felt was inevitable after a messy break-up from his girlfriend; and his most recent work has been in the mental-health field. This is a study, then, of an artist on the edge of, perhaps even gripped by, madness.

It’s an incredibly well crafted multimedia show, in which Noble often interacts with film footage of himself. It starts with a video of Noble’s disappointed mother (is it really his mother?) saying, “Catherine Tate appeared on stage with him. Now she’s doing Hollywood. Am I bovvered? Yes, I fucking am.” But fame clearly was never a motive for Noble (although he is irritated that a female artist with the same name appears before him on Google), as he gleefully guys celebrities such as Bono, self-help guru Paul McKenna, sports presenter Des Lynam and TV presenter Floella Benjamin. They may be easy targets, but the gags about them are genuinely funny.

When you’re suicidal, time is precious, Noble tells us, so he bought a DVD of March of the Penguins and made his own 18-second animated version. He then put the fake DVDs on supermarket shelves, encouraging the buyers to “use this extra hour and 25 minutes of your life meaningfully”. Noble also films himself doing disgusting things with food - he puts the jerk into jerk chicken - and feminine products in his local Morrisons. (Coincidentally my local, too, and an unutterably depressing place to shop. Now I know why.) We see him “giving of himself” in another way by throwing a bunch of £5 notes around a Citizens Advice Bureau, a scene I found infinitely more distasteful than the come jokes. If you’re poor, wouldn’t you make a grab for a fiver on the floor?

But amid the prankish (if pointed) humour there are deeply unsettling scenes, such as extended footage of a woman self-harming. Which is when, as happens most nights, a few people walked out.

This show, then, throws up a quandary. If all before us is real, should we be invited to laugh at someone else’s pain? And even if the brother of a woman who committed suicide (the self-harmer) gives his consent for a recorded phone conversation to be included - which in no way enlightens us about why people kill themselves - should it form part of the show? Or does the need to educate people about the commonness of mental-health problems - one in four of us will be affected by them at some point in our lives - outweigh any objections?

So much is funny, disturbing and strikingly original about this show that I was shocked and entertained in equal measure, and would have left amused, if unsettled, by it. But I stayed after the show had fizzled to its end and the audience had been rudely dismissed with “You’ve got to go now” and the women to whom he had given his ejaculate were asked to stay to provide their personal details. At this point (I was asked to leave), the evening veered into creepy, misogynistic territory, and suddenly seemed a lot less amusing and inventive. It had become - and I hope you’ll forgive me for using this phrase - just self-indulgent wank.

Kim Noble Will Die tickets booking at the Soho Theatre until 9 January 2010.