RON – Riverside Studios, London

Writer: Ted Walliker

Directors: Lev Govorovski and Ted Walliker

Ted Walliker’s one-man show, RON, currently showing at Riverside Studios, is a box of absurd delights. Written and performed by the ridiculously talented Walliker and directed by Lev Govorovski, it’s a fabulous shaggy dog story about two sort-of friends.

Innocent Tony is in thrall to gruff-voiced Mike. They’ve been mates of a kind since the 7-year-old Mike, already possessed of an improbably deep voice, bullied Tony into eating dirt. In the intervening years, Tony has evidently been pining, longing in vain for just one sign of Mike’s affection. Now, admittedly, this is a tale of absurd violence  – quite a few characters are bumped off along the way – but there is a touching undertow to this central relationship.

Walliker himself effortlessly slides between the two characters. It’s the endless tonal disjunction that is so funny. Sweet-natured Tony executes gracefully little ballet movements, ever keen to fall in with whatever Mike suggests. For reasons we don’t question, Tony sheds most of his clothing in the course of the show, ending up in chaste white Y-fronts and vest. Occasionally, Walliker becomes other characters, from the hapless eponymous hero, Ron, an employee of McDonald’s, to a wildly unlikely mafia boss: ‘This safe is filthy. We must get the safe cleaners in again.’

Walliker’s imagination knows no bounds. We’re briefly in a scene from Gladiator; then we’re in a nightclub where Mike insists they snort coke in the gents (naïve Tony really isn’t keen). At some stage, there’s a pleasingly violent encounter on the roof of a multi-story car park. And that’s really only in the first 10 minutes. There is much, much more, every twist and turn of the plot more glorious than the last. You really can’t guess where this is going. But such is the power of Walliker’s writing that we feel confident that he is taking us somewhere. That writing voice, as well as his performance, is unique. And amid the dark, zany comedy, there are some lovely lyrical moments.

Sheer pleasure from start to finish.

Runs until 5 July 2026