The magic of Issey the oddball

Most comedy is, let's face it, a bit of a walk-over these days. Most audiences can tell what a comedian thinks as soon as he or she walks out on stage. But how would you cope with a Japanese comic actor?

Issey Ogata is a theatrical legend over there, and many of his loyal followers were at the Riverside. The rest of us donned headsets to hear a simultaneous translation by an American called Dan Schlesinger, who sounded like the late Lenny Bruce.

Ogata's one-man show is a septet of character sketches, including a travelling musician who gibs at being a Buddhist monk because the hours are too long, and an oriental alternative to the Dead Parrot sketch in which a strung-out businessman - one of many - walks into a bar holding an injured crow in a paper bag and can't believe no one is interested.

Ogata's characters are all oddballs and mavericks, out of their depth in a culture in which self-justification is the first moral requisite. A computer programmer who refuses to believe he has been sacked, then films his disbelief on video and asks: "Mind if I put this on my Home page?" A young man amuses himself by calling up several lonely hearts lines, posing, on one occasion, as a Sumo wrestler forced to retire owing to water on the knee.

Each sketch was accompanied by rollicking laughter from the Japanese and, a second or so later, a slightly less knowing laugh from the Brits. It was all a bit disorientating, but one felt uplifted afterwards, and broader about the horizons.