Jackson's Way, Touring

Will Adamsdale was so sweat-drenched by the end of his character-comedy show Jackson's Way – on the night I saw it at the Soho Theatre – that you might think he had just emerged from a frantic triathlon swim. Actually, he is performing a marathon of sorts: the Jacksathon, 26 gigs in as many days in various venues across London.

He was dripping with perspiration primarily because the venue's studio was sweltering. That no punters went into heat-rage meltdown says a lot for Adamsdale's personableness – which isn't obliterated by his onstage persona being a manic, self-promoting American life coach.

Indeed, Adamsdale's fans seem positively indulgent given that this show is, knowingly, an utter waste of time. Chris John Jackson, complete with deliberately poor-quality, tacked-on head mic, is a bit of a wacko whose life-coaching boils down to proselytising in the name of pointlessness. He's here to convert us – his "cadets" – to that creed with an introductory talk/workshop/seminar, aka a "talkshopinar". He bounds up and down the aisles in super-excited mode, getting us to whoop and to shout "Achieved!" when he slowly raises his arm to touch his head. This is a totally pointless action or "jaction": his key concept.

We get a vague glimpse of Jackson's backstory. He worked in commerce until his sudden conversion, when he stopped and doggedly stared at a business park – for four days. On a projection screen, he illustrates with a diagram what ample opportunities we all have to perform actions in a similar vein – ie for no reason whatsoever. A tiny black dot in the middle of the screen represents life's "pointful stuff", surrounded by an infinite expanse of pointlessness.

Examples of jactions take up the rest of the evening, as the self-appointed guru runs through his favourites, not least "trash exchange", which is switching one bit of litter for another. As he works in more cadet training, we are all required to shout a randomly selected name as he throws a tea towel in the air in an attempt to stop it landing. Later, selected punters get to stare at the wall or dance behind a curtain while Jackson strains to push London in a northerly direction.

For sure, all this nonsense raised a fair few giggles and hoots among Adamsdale's late-night crowd. Clearly some were readily becoming groupies or were already groupies, this being a revival tour - Jackson's Way won the Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe back in 2004, when it was lauded by comic Stewart Lee.

Does it live up to the hype, though? Frankly, no. Being subjected to the dragged-out jaction joke for 75 minutes reduced me to long stretches of glazed boredom, not howling laughter. I'd rather see Jackson in snippets, as a running gag in a gig with other acts, or popping up sporadically in other media (on the web or maybe in a TV drama). You might argue that Jackson's ideology and this show are radically consistent, the latter being a thoroughgoing waste of time. One of Jackson's cod tenets is, after all, PTI - Pushing Through with Intensity, with the test question being: "Have you taken the idea as far as you can… till it makes you feel physically sick?"

Jackson's Way explained

Yet, even if Adamsdale is hyper-energetic and sweating, the scrappiness of the show's structure feels disappointingly lazy. He drags on a load of old garbage (quite literally, bits of old carpet and broken toasters) to fill the last 20-odd minutes with a mock game show called "Moving Things" which is, roughly speaking, the chess equivalent of Mornington Crescent. Because it hasn’t been integrated earlier on, it looks like padding. One unimpressed spectator, when asked what he thought the next move should be, suggested Adamsdale should just get things moving.

There is also a sense that this is a wasted opportunity. In focusing our attention on the issue of the pointlessness in contemporary life, Adamsdale is certainly touching on something (albeit paradoxically) profound. However, a smarter comedian – or one just putting more work in – might have thought through the philosophy with more precision. And having all this presented by someone who may be mildly deranged – while that has its intriguing and droll moments – starts to look like an excuse to let Adamsdale, intellectually, off the hook.

The satire could be more trenchant too, rather than losing its edge as the evening wears on. Shouldn't Adamsdale bring it back round to point the finger sharply at the amount of garbage already filling our everyday adult lives instead of his rather whimsical conclusion that we should all perform more jactions - and, have we noticed, small children are really into them?

On the other hand, comedy is, of course, allowed to condone silliness. And maybe the satire inherent in Jackson's Way seeps subtly into your subconscious.

• The Jacksathon continues at various London locations until 30 January