Aditi Mittal’s recent Radio 4 show was called A Beginner’s Guide to India, and it also describes what Mittal serves up for her maiden Edinburgh fringe show, Global Village Idiot.
It can feel as if Mittal, one of India’s most successful English-language standups, is performing a set required to ingratiate herself to a UK audience, rather than one that might interest her more. I look forward to the show that defines her by something other than her nationality. In the meantime, this is a tasty appetiser from a comic showing flashes of sharpness and steel amid her off-the-peg gags about Bollywood and the Kama Sutra.
Mittal takes a while to warm up, and seems a little nervous. Opening with a story about waking up to an intrusive seagull in her Edinburgh digs, the show settles into a series of bulletins from modern India: how men pursue women; the surfeit of religions; and, of course, how her mum is desperate for Mittal to get married. Some of this feels hack, but just as often she brings the material to life with a new angle (her bewilderment at the western concept of the “food fight”); a choice turn of phrase (neat use of the verb “to scooch” in a routine about learning to use toilet paper and bidets); or brusque reminders of the unresolved tensions (colonialism, marital rape) behind the picturesque poverty cliches.
Mind you, those reality checks are rare. More often, Mittal draws a veil: her purview of modern Indian religion makes no mention, say, of resurgent Hindu nationalism. Latterly, the show focuses on her experience as an incomer to the US and UK – an innocent abroad marvelling at how ungentlemanly “gentlemen’s clubs” appear to be.
Mittal’s nerves never quite settle. She’s scanning a crib-sheet for prompts. Some thoughts (on the global farming crisis, for example) are incompletely processed into comedy; others peter out, and her command of the material seems imperfect. But I suspect these are teething problems as she acclimatises to the fringe. One is left with the impression less of a village idiot than a forthright performer with a sharp critical mind – even if this fairly shallow overview of modern India isn’t the most adventurous way to showcase it.
• In rep at Underbelly Med Quad, Edinburgh, until 27 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
