Shuddering with the rumble of Waterloo trains, dank with must, rain and sweat, The Old Vic tunnels was transformed into The Lonely Hearts Comedy Club last night.

In Feburary we held Coming Up. This time, it’s Coming Up Later – a late-night weekender of comedy, smut and theatre. 

Decked out in candles and fairy lights, the night started with two girls having an arm wrestle over one lucky guy, who was asked to get on all fours to act as a platform. “I don’t know what you’re expecting but I think you’re going to be disappointed,” offered the compère, his eyebrows raised. 

It set the tone for a raucous evening. Four stand-ups stood up to bemoan single life and miserable sex, while Carly Smallman shared a song about unrequited love for a younger brother.

The most acute observation came from headliner Sara Pascoe, whose one-woman sketch about singledom involved continually knocking on a lover’s door before realising, as soon as she was allowed entry, she was struck dumb with boredom.

We were promised something a bit darker, a bit more risqué, to appease the later slot, and Ophelia Bitz’s ArtWank – a cabaret and burlesque show – promised that and more. A series of screenings wrenched from the murky depths of archival pornography dating from the 1920s to the ’60s, this was nothing but confrontational.

In ArtWank, sex is distanced, mediated – refracted through a semblance of Parisian culture, apparently the centre of romance and smut.

This is cultural detritus; dead media, and to watch it is to part-exhume an unwanted and disinterested ghost.

And yet it worked. Because the people that shot this smut were taking risks, breaking taboos that stood buttressed and firm. Now, it’s a click away. Seeing it up there, projecting it, wanking over the art of it, merely revealed just how obscene it all is.

Coming Up continues at The Old Vic Tunnels tonight. Tickets are now sold out. Find out more.

Images by Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor.