Wait, What is This? is a fast-paced comedy written entirely in rhyme. Created and performed by Lydia Keating and John Harper, the show began life as a five-minute rhyming sketch performed at cabaret nights in London, Paris and Tallinn. Audiences kept asking for more — so naturally, the pair wrote an entire 50 minutes of chaos.

Blending clown, physical theatre and rapid-fire rhyme, the show begins innocently enough with a playful demonstration of rhyming words before spiralling into an increasingly absurd world of marital role-play, counselling sessions, medication adverts, mistaken assumptions and ever-shifting realities. Just when audiences think they understand what is happening, the story joyfully pulls the rug from under them and heads somewhere entirely unexpected.

At once playful, ridiculous and strangely clever, Wait, What is This? delights in language, theatrical invention and comic surprise.

In rhyme, the show might best describe itself like this:

Come, have a gander at our comic two-hander!
Brimming with raunchy, riotous rhyme,
A plot so chaotic, you'll lose all sense of time.
Tangled twists meet metered bliss,
You'll leave gasping: “Wait... What Is This?”

Lydia Keating and John Harper met in 2022 while training at the International Theatre School of Jacques Lecoq in Paris and have collaborated ever since. Their previous show, Clownfishing, was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and toured venues in the UK and Tallinn, Estonia.

*Please note there is no lift to access the top floor of Three Wise Monkeys. There are five flights of hand-railed stairs to reach the top floor with rest opportunities between each flight. Also, their licensing does not allow anyone under the age of 18 years of age to be in the venue past 9pm. Please consider this when booking.