It is nigh on impossible to take Kim Noble: You’re Not Alone as a singular piece of theatre, a song and dance about the inevitability of loneliness. It delicately fuses numerable disciplines into one brutal hour that is arresting, bombarding, sometimes sentimental and always unignorable (long after the event). But to call it theatre, in this instance alone, is utterly insufficient. Of course it is theatre. It is also Kim Noble the man: bare, human, naked and honest, parading and prostrating his broken bits on stage for all to see. It is also a testament to our loneliness – our paradoxically collective loneliness. As he strips down façade and replaces it with ruthless truth, no matter how personal that account is, we can all relate to it. We see our own fears, our own fragility and our own broken bits. In those two aspects Kim Noble: You’re Not Alone is doing exactly what it says on the tin. Far more so in the sum of its parts: the raw empathy the show generates comes from Kim Noble telling Kim Noble that he is not alone and bloody well proving it by doing it front of us; and the wide-eyed, hearts-thumping audience that can’t believe he is saying what he is saying, doing what he is doing and has done what he has done, and that most of all we feel it. We all feel every inch of it.

I’d wager that I could go every single night of the run and feel something entirely different. I know that as fact, largely because the show is continuous. It continues into the bar as its audience is so parched for gin by the emptiness and weird kind of longing that we’re left with. Post-first sip, silence is broken in unison, everyone talking about it and yet nobody really knowing what to say. One thing is for sure: none of us were talking about the time Kim shat in a church or did something equally crass, desperate or stalker-ish. We were all too preoccupied with the whole, the feeling, the emptiness and the absolutely overwhelming desire to hug Kim Noble. And that preoccupation continues on – I still cannot stop thinking about it.

It is blowing my mind how Noble has managed to create such an effective balance that none of us question it. How is it even possible for us to watch a man dressed only in a gaffer tape codpiece, show how he pretended to be a woman online to effectively groom lonely, perverse, middle-aged men into not feeling lonely anymore, and it not be dwelled upon? Noble is walking a tightrope, whilst wearing heels and juggling at the same time. It takes impeccable skill to bring so many elements to one stage – the intricacy of the narrative that drags us through the surreal and darn right disturbing to the heartfelt and human; the multimedia and baffling number of strands that don’t attach themselves to any one story, apart from that of Kim Noble the man. And most of all it is funny. I don’t know how it’s funny or even why it’s funny, but you’re going to have to take my word for it: it is funny! Funny and deeply, deeply sad.

The reason, I think, that it is funny and sad in one intricate balancing act is because it’s life. That’s life. That’s why we all share in it with him. That’s why we can’t stop thinking about it. That’s why I want to see it again. It’s an affirmation. In the act of hanging, drawing and quartering his life in front of an audience he has, at once, been truly personal and insightfully human. This is his story but it taps into our secret selves and resonates with us people, all of us, whatever the situation, however awful, however mediocre.

Kim Noble: You’re Not Alone is playing at the Soho Theatre until 9 January. For more information and tickets, see the Soho Theatre website.