This surreal, madcap, erratically plotted show won’t be to everyone’s taste, but, for anyone looking for something different, this is perfect. In some ways it resembles A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. They both involve a bewildered man in a dressing-gown confronting the meaning of life, but instead of a guide to the galaxy, this has a ‘choose your own adventure’ novel that an audience member has to read from at length, on more than one occasion.

The audience member fled after a terrifying sequence where the performer, Simon Kane, wears a disturbing mask and shines a torch under his chin. He did warn us that he was in a double act, and we were the other half. Audience participation is increasingly a part of solo shows, it gives the impression of a larger cast, without having to spend the money or split any profits, but in a show about chance, loosely based on Jonah and the Whale, keeping the audience in a state of worried anticipation is an inspired way of showing not telling.

Kane manages to be both alarmingly unpredictable and reassuringly genial. He has confidence and authority, even when he appears to be stumbling over his words, or aimlessly wandering about the stage. It’s very cinematic. He cuts between scenes; he looks into the middle-distance, he stands under a spotlight, singing in a high reedy voice, draped in fabric that could be the inner lining of a whale’s stomach. The song is deeply moving, like a hymn sung by an abandoned dying child, then the lights snap-up and it’s a middle-aged man with his shirt around his neck.

There are a lot of songs, instead of furthering the story; they seem more like an attempt at terror management. Kane emerges from a laundry bag and sings a folk song about the moon. There’s one about being a computer game, and another about being safe. At some point he’s in a hotel room strewn with magic books, yelling insults at random strangers. He plays a tape of a women repeating words that have no obvious connection to each other, and a voice over tells us that the play has three stages; fight, flight and the Marriot, as if we’re moving towards some inevitable catastrophe, or maybe life itself is the catastrophe and we’re moving away from it.

It may dwell on angst and be full of sinister shocks and disorientating requests, but it’s very funny, and deserves a full house.

‘Jonah Non Grata‘ is at Assembly Rooms – Front Room until Sun 24 Aug 2025 at 21:10