Alan Resnick @ Monkey Barrel

One Funny Hour is about right – but is it funny ha-ha or funny peculiar? A US comedian and visual artist associated with Adult Swim, Resnick is often described as a cult favourite. If 'cult' is shorthand for the uncategorisable, the experimental or transgressive, then the description serves this show well. This is stand-up as a Trojan horse – but it's not clear what for.

The opening is recognisable enough – absurdly so, given it's a kind of whistle-stop overview of comedy types or genres. Resnick seems somewhat diffident, with something of the young Woody Allen in his self-presentation. Witty, sardonic certainly, but perhaps not wholly sure of his footing. In what follows, however, once the waivers are signed and the doors are locked, that hesitancy is revealed to be an illusion – this is a performer doing something so weirdly particular that real self-confidence is required.

Any details will act as spoilers, but suffice to say that even once the conventional stand-up frame is disposed of (with contempt, as whiney and inconsequential), and another typology is established, it's not obvious whether the show is intended as a wake-up call or a primer in emerging aesthetics. Both, perhaps.

Resnick ends the hour with a statement about the increasing power and importance of the live encounter in the era of fake news – confident that when we close our eyes to sleep it will be his face we see. Turns out he's quite right, but what to make of it all, we’re still rather unsure.

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Alan Resnick: One Funny Hour, Monkey Barrel (MB2), until 24 Aug (not 13), 11.25pm, £10-15