British-Iraqi comedian Hasan Al-Habib’s eye-catching show is about coming from a part of the world blighted by poverty, danger and the world’s negative preconceptions. But that’s enough about Birmingham. There’s plenty more where that came from in Death to the West (Midlands), an adroit solo debut from the self-styled “amusing Arab”, the son of Middle Eastern incomers now addressing in standup his complex sense of belonging. The whole show balances his Brummie and his Iraqi identities, with reference to his stereotypical immigrant dad, his growing up during the second Iraq war, and – finally – visiting his so-called homeland as an adult.
It’s an extremely polished introduction to Al-Habib and his talents; perhaps a little too smooth and slickly engineered, wanting some grit in its machine. A factor in that may be its flirting-with-formulaic familiarity as a second-generation narrative. Which isn’t to doubt the truth and emotional significance to our host of the stories he tells of feeling shame at his Iraqi background when the country was at war with the UK and of trying to pass as white British to fit in. If any of this sounds tormented, it certainly isn’t in the telling: Al-Habib’s touch couldn’t be lighter as he cracks wise about Margaret Thatcher’s contraceptive value, Jack Grealish as a Brummie archetype, and how his father learned to love Jewish people.
In the former Footlights man’s hands, this stuff twinkles like sunlight on the Tigris (or should that be the Grand Union Canal?), as he joshes us about Islamic terrorism and the imminent Muslim takeover of the UK. Ballast is provided by one traumatic story of his father’s life under Saddam (later deployed as an unlikely cautionary tale at a UK theme park), and elsewhere by incidences of everyday racism directed at the seven-year-old Hasan and towards his stoical dad – whose relationship with his son is sketched here in an understated but eloquent filial portrait. It’s an adept and enjoyable show, finally, about what belonging looks like for a man suspended between the Middle East and the West Midlands.
At Soho theatre, London, until 15 November.
