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A Best Newcomer nominee in 2024, Li Jin Hao just released a version of that show (“Swimming in a Submarine”) on YouTube earlier this summer.
During this hour, he jokes about how Show Business only rewards pitches that are somehow both familiar and yet brand new. If you watched his previous show, then this new hour certainly pulls off that trick and then some. Here, he comes off like an animated Mitch Hedberg, slinging surreal set-ups and punchlines with a bright backdrop of a sphere that can glow as bright as the sun or the moon.
You’ll be repeating clever lines of his afterward, such as this about the tilted floors in his home. “My flat: Not.”
He reminds us he was 17 in Singapore, and 27 in London, and already reminiscing nostalgically while daydreaming mythologically.
But you’ll be swimming in the present, lapping up his laugh lines.
The only sour note on the night I saw him came when the comedian invited an audience member onstage, only to have the bloke remain seated and bomb at his attempts to heckle. That was one moment I’d like Mr. Nostalgia to erase from our memories.
Li Jin Hao: Falling From a Moon plays the Above room at Pleasance Courtyard during the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe.
