Old God @ Assembly Roxy

Old God; a being so old they have forgotten their name, a being out of time. He's an exquisite clown in ruff, doublet and hose, his manner arch but kindly with Cary Grant-like cadences, and urbanity to match. Old God is finely tuned into the audience, but to call it crowd work seems wrong, and a clumsy description of his divinations.

He teases us with T. S. Eliot, and mentions of Versailles – there's the suggestion of depth, a hint of high culture. However, the bits are resolutely, brilliantly, superficial, albeit underpinned with satirical contempt for the US tech giants. But when Old God mimes spinning the cosmos and looking down on the Earth, rubbing the glass to see, then briefly lost in the contemplation of a single ripening seed, there is something sublime at work.

The show collapses at its zenith, and the man behind the mask is revealed. A parody of a very contemporary kind of self-involved youth – brattish, the embodiment of US insularity and complacency – this new jock persona is the absolute antithesis of Old God's foppish cultivation. Slurping on a juice box, he sketches out his strategies for the show's success. 'You liked me more when I was him', he says sulkily, and there is a weird kind of loss in the breaking of the illusion and Old God's disappearance.

These are two masterful comic portraits, so radically different as to be almost sinister. Performer Alec Jones-Trujillo plays with Old God's promise of depth and plenitude, undercutting it with the bro's venal character, posing an intriguing question about how a basic character can perform a complex one. Our soulful clown does return, and we finally get our shot of poetic beauty, but even that final satisfaction is comically compromised.

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Old God, Assembly Roxy (Roxyboxy), until 24 Aug (not 18), 9.55pm, £9-13