Li Jin Hao: Falling from a Moon review – comedy’s Mr Nostalgia is now the man of the moment

In his award-nominated show, the standup ruminates on myth and memory with some lovely observations

‘There’s a moment when that ends,” muses Li Jin Hao, “and this begins …” As well as being jam-packed with swoonsome one-liners like that, Li’s show traces the tension between this and that; the draw the past exerts on this self-proclaimed Mr Nostalgia, versus the necessity of living in the present. Beginning with a yearning sun-and-moon myth learned at his granny’s knee, Li’s show – nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award – toggles between a day in his current London life and memories of his upbringing in east Asia, and a long-gone romance he can’t quite shake off.

What makes the show distinctive, though, is the ruminative angle at which Li addresses his experiences, and the quality and consistency of its joke-writing – so many ravishing little insights revealing the world to us in shapes askew. It’s a leap forward from his 2024 debut, which signalled the talent but was sheepish in its delivery. The only thing sheepish here is the twisty livestock gag that opens Li’s show, with a swagger that marks a performer now in his element onstage.

So if his present is in such good nick, what’s with the nostalgia? That question won’t initially trouble you, as we follow our host from his London flat with a sloping floor, on to public transport (on pressing the stop button: “I’m tickling the bus!”), then to the cinema. The trip detours via countless sumptuous routines and notions: on how differently letters and numbers behave; on rhyme versus reason; on “how come when two people give each other their virginities, they’re left with none?” Then we flash back to a Chinese childhood and Singaporean youth, flooding Li with memories of a life lived in more vivid colour.

But looking back, as myths from Lot to Orpheus remind us, can be a dangerous business. Li’s show, finally, is about the need to put that past behind him – a theme it over-articulates in its closing moments. There’s no need: we can glean plenty from what goes before, while glorying in the linguistic and observational invention at play in image after joke after slanted aperçu. That was the show I saw; this is Li’s moment.

• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August
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