Sam Eley is Basil Crumbwick: Soul Sewage ★★★★★

Were you to encounter someone like Basil Crumbwick in real life, you’d run for the hills. Or the pub, where he’s likely banned so cannot bother you. But when Sam Eley puts on a giant papier-mâché head and becomes Basil Crumbwick in Sam Eley is Basil Crumbwick: Soul Sewage, you’re happy for the company, and much entertained.

Crumbwick may have a sewer of a soul, but he is wickedly funny and not terribly modest. “You are lucky to be here,” he announces at the show’s start, when he also expresses self-admiration for his work: “I am absolutely blown away by the quality.”

Crumbwick also has a wide range of cultural references, and no one and nowhere is sacred. Jokes about Michael Jackson and Sylvia Plath are followed by summations of Scotland (“a wretched country”) and astrology (“I’m an Aquarius, which means I love tits”).

Smartly, Eley has constructed a show with character that actually has some depth and is more than a series of cranky, obtuse observations. Crumbwick has an annoying neighbor, Beverly, who is also clearly his only friend, and when she has to move away there is a crack in his armor. He’s clearly a lonely man trying to connect, even making an effort to befriend his bin man, worrying about the quality of the trash he’s tossing. And when that fails, he tosses tomato soup at random people for attention.

Best of all, Eley’s Crumbwick is writing a self-help book, and to the audience’s delight and enlightenment, he reads various chapters aloud. The advice is so wildly wrong that there’s little doubt that the book would become a bestseller were it to actually be published.