Karen Healey reviews Someone In This Crowd Will Betray Me: A Reuben Solo Mystery, at Little Andromeda, Thursday 12 March 2026.
Australian comedian Reuben Solo’s kinetic, surrealistic stand-up show is a truth within a lie within an existential crisis that’s no less affecting for also being (maybe?) entirely performative.
It starts with the setting. We enter a smoke-filled room, red and yellow spotlights cutting through the haze, while noirish jazz sets the mood. This is the shadowy world of dames who’ll betray you and fellas who’ll shoot you in the back. It’s a world where you can’t trust anyone, but, you know, in a sexy way.
And Reuben Solo doesn’t trust us. Why should he? After all, the show is allegedly sold out, yet there are empty seats. When he starts asking questions, audience members lie about their names, their jobs, the contents of their bags. He can’t even trust his sound tech to deliver the right sound effect on cue.
Of course, Solo is lying too. From the beginning, his hardboiled internal monologue voiceover cynically undermines what he says into the mic. “This is a true story,” he says at the start of a rambling fiction about getting dumped, liberally spiked with details he’s just taken from the audience. He advises one guy in the front row that he’s going to keep doing a bit at him as long as the laughs keep coming. It’s nothing personal. “Really, I’m on your side,” he assures the guy, and then does it again.
Solo’s crowd-work is sharp and assured, apparently anarchic and off the map, but always veering back on-route. He dumps boring interactions and zeroes in on the audience members he can work with. He builds rapport swiftly and boldly exploits it. He’s obnoxious, and we love him. He calls us fuckwits and morons and we applaud. I’d trust him to keep the attention of a bored Year 10 class on a Friday last period (complimentary), though he might just do it by setting fire to the curtains.
Or maybe not – he steps back from one potentially really nasty bit with grace and pivots into the next chaotic turn, dancing across a tightrope strung from razor wire.
The show is presented as a one-man gig, but Solo’s sound technician Max is with him all the way, except for the parts where he hangs Solo out to dry, because that’s funnier, or the parts he’s messing up because the pace is ridiculous. After a while, it becomes impossible to tell the difference between real missed cues Solo plays off for laughs, or scripted errors that he knows we’ll giggle at.
This show wouldn’t exist without audience participation. Solo builds scenes with the game audience members who can keep up with him, pushing the boundaries out, and then pushing them again. Watching Solo stage an increasingly elaborate confrontation with someone he picked out of the crowd five minutes ago isn’t just a masterclass in audience improvisation; it’s a moving reminder of the power of connection.
Because amidst the third act nihilistic meandering about the difficulty of discerning reality from performance, this is the truth: Solo is taking big risks, and he needs us to trust him. He needs to be able to trust us.
By the end of the show, Solo ramps up to a finale that makes me genuinely afraid for his physical safety. He can’t save himself; he needs someone in this crowd to save him.
Will they?
Trust me: It’s worth going along to find out.
Someone In This Crowd Will Betray Me: A Reuben Solo Mystery is currently touring New Zealand and Australia.
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