Edinburgh and Beyond, Theate Royal, Winchester

THERE is no feeling in live theatre quite like watching a stand-up comedian die on his feet.

It's what the word excruciating was invented for. But of all the people you might have expected to encounter such a fate on the Edinburgh and Beyond comedy tour, it wasn't headliner Dan Antopolski.

But the three-time Perrier Award nominee was reduced to reminding his Winchster audience of this pedigree, plaintively pleading "I've won awards" as his material disappeared into an abyss of shuffling and embarrassed coughing.

Likeable, but crashing and burning nonetheless, he eventually stooped to taking questions from an audience by now experiencing a collective wish to be somewhere else. This was a low point in a mixed bag of an evening - the final date in what looked like it had been a long tour.

Surreal Canadian Tony Law had amused with tales of converting his dog into a seal with only a tub of vaseline and a vivid imagination before his fellow countryman Craig Short really hit the high notes with musings on unsavoury activities with a moose.

The whole was ably stitched together by compere Chris Addison but the night will be remembered for its pathos more than its punchlines.