Watching Ahir Shah, one wonders whether some fiendish identity swap has taken place – think Big, or Trading Places – between a downtrodden young radical and a whiskery English aristocrat.
The disconnect between his patrician speech and his dissenting worldview (Shah says he sounds “like he’s been colonised by his own voice” ) takes some getting used to. But stick with it: his new, free-fringe outing is excellent, both a questing argument against compassion fatigue and a generational cri de coeur, disguised as a very funny, self-mocking comedy show.
Shah covers a lot of ground with this set, ranging from last year’s Edinburgh fringe, to the offices of Charlie Hebdo, from environmental apocalypse in Bangladesh to romance in Oman. But his stride is purposeful.
It’s a show about our western cocoon, and the fissures appearing in it. His generation, says Shah, fits the criteria of a new proletariat, which enjoys the trappings of privilege, but no longer the reality. (“Man is gluten-free, but everywhere he is in chains.”)
The perspective recalls Liam Williams’s as Shah marvels at the contradictions of Gen Y radicalism: he uses his iPhone to research ethical consuming; he can’t afford the hardback of Thomas Piketty’s tome: “I was too poor to find out why I’m poor.”
There are many such aperçus and deft coinages, but Shah’s more than just clever. He plays the fool, too, but it’s a brand of foolishness (self-absorbed, now pompous, now pathetic) that helpfully dramatises his diagnosis of the world’s ills.
With the almost sole exception of a gratuitous farmyard set-piece where he gets sexy with a cow, it’s a consistently insightful hour, sealed by a lovely coda that underscores Shah’s point in the most unexpected but effective manner.
This may not be how you’d expect the poor, insecure and pissed-off to speak. But Shah’s is a voice that’s well worth listening to.
• At The Counting House until 30 August. Box office: 0131-667 7533.
