LIVE!

Taking a three-minute internet video gag and stretching it across an hour of theater usually exposes the stitching, but Jonathan Pie works on stage because the fury has somewhere to fall apart. Rather than standing at a mic delivering conventional punchlines, Tom Walker plays the suit-and-tie correspondent trying and failing to host a respectable light-entertainment broadcast, only to repeatedly lose control over the microphone as his producer squawks in his ear.

Filmed at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London on March 3, 2017, the show captured Walker at the height of his internet momentum. After years working as an unheralded actor, he conceived Pie in late 2015 as a parody of television correspondents venting when the cameras stopped rolling. A clip railing against Donald Trump’s presidential victory had gone viral worldwide just months prior, giving Walker the leverage to mount a 51-date UK tour co-written with comedian Andrew Doyle.

The stage production builds out Pie’s off-screen misery. Between broadsides aimed at the Conservative government, the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, and the self-congratulatory posturing of the liberal left, his private life leaks out over open microphones. The performance leans into the theatricality of a man coming undone, bottoming out during a forced Children in Need promotion where he is coerced into an oversized panda costume while muttering about his dignity.

Critical response was predictably split, drawing praise from comedy outlets like Chortle alongside a panning in The Times. The 65-minute show was released as a direct digital download via JonathanPie.com later that month.