Amsterdam Underground Comedy Collective Presents Hans Teeuwen

There is a strong buzz of excitement about Hans Teeuwen in the packed-out crowd at the Pleasance Dome, even before the man arrives on stage. Thirteen months ago, the cult Dutch comic was all but unheard of in the UK. Since then, a short performance at last year’s Fringe (his first in English), then a handful of shows in London and some glowing reviews in the press have cemented his reputation as a bright new star on the British scene.

Teeuwen doesn’t have to do much to get his first few laughs, perhaps because of the audience’s confidence that they are about to watch something great. He comes on in his enigmatic grey suit, bows, takes to the piano and proceeds to play a deliberately chaotic piece of music, all discords and non-sequiturs. We are already giggling.

What follows is an hour of the most deliberate, finely-honed and sublime nonsense you could hope for at a standup gig. It is absurdism in the best tradition of Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear. It turns the world on its head, shakes it up and watches the pieces fall out; and in the process, it throws into sharp relief some of the many absurd ideas that we live with and often blithely tolerate every day.

It is also pant-wettingly funny. As with all the best comedy, it’s difficult to describe or even comprehend exactly why. A lot of the techniques that Teeuwen uses are almost aggressively simple. He will start a story, then frustrate your expectations of where that story should be going at every possible turn. He will throw together the most bizarre collisions of ideas imaginable, then get you to repeat those collisions of ideas in a line of song, so that you become acutely aware of how ridiculous they are.

These aren’t original comic techniques, but they are played out with such fine precision that one is left utterly helpless. There is something profoundly satisfying and almost elemental about the complete absence of meaning in much of the set.

Which isn’t to imply that Teeuwen has nothing to say. Nestling in among all the nonsense is, among other things, a bold and powerful statement against allowing respect for religions to stifle free speech. Far from forcing this point, Teeuwen simply allows the context to highlight the absurdity of religious dogma. It is all the more poignant when you realise that the comic was a friend of the murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and has campaigned passionately away from the stage for freedom of expression.

The set is delivered with a brilliant physicality that utilises the small stage to the full, making this feel less like traditional standup and more like intelligent, inspired clowning. Teeuwen has a wonderfully expressive face, which at one point contorts from manic laughter to abject despair in a split-second. There is never a dull moment, as Teeuwen invites us to revel in a gratuitous re-imagining of a Mozart classic, a scary impression of a stalker and a song about Nostradamus, accompanied by drumming on an upturned amphora.

By the finale, there’s no doubt that Teeuwen has fully vindicated the high excitement the audience entered with. This is brave, beautiful, creative comedy, and unlike anything else you will see at the Fringe this year. You owe yourself a ticket.