‘I don’t want to be a cartoon martyr,” says Hari Kondabolu, who received death threats after his TV documentary The Problem with Apu. It described Kondabolu’s unease as an Indian American at being represented by The Simpsons’ store clerk – and its ironic consequence, he tells us, has been to unite him with Apu for ever in the public mind. Will this West End run establish an identity for the New Yorker away from cartoon controversy? It certainly lays the foundations, as Kondabolu’s weak start gives way to some barbed standup on race, religion and America’s culture wars.
Publicity for the show, pointedly called American Hour, emphasises the lack of “any kind of story arc”. Even by those digressive standards, its opening 15 minutes hop about, from cliches about his parents wishing he were a lawyer, via his time teaching comedy in prisons, to self-conscious stuff about whether standup is an art form. (“Nobody’s heckling a play,” he says, citing Shakespeare as a bad example.) There’s a lack of warmth, coupled with weak material – on his mum’s reaction watching Home Alone, say – and too much commentary on how his crowd are or aren’t reacting.
But it picks up as Kondabolu reveals more of himself. One routine mocks the idea that Christmas in America is under attack. Another is about how Kondabolu, who experiences depression, longs to have a non-white therapist. The joke construction is by-the-book, but there are strong punchlines – as when he skewers the conceit of “the PC police”, or challenges the argument that homosexuality is “unnatural” with reference to aeroplanes. (“Can you watch a movie in a bird, God?”)
Intensity of feeling escalates as the gig proceeds: one role-play features a hungry baby and a man loudly enraged by public breastfeeding. Kondabolu’s contempt for the latter is obvious – and elsewhere, that superciliousness can be off-putting. The woman who shouts drive-by racist remarks may well be “a piece of shit”, but the phrase makes for a charmless punchline. But there’s no gainsaying the stark picture that emerges of life with brown skin in an America at war with itself.
At Soho theatre, London, until 15 December.
