Janine Harouni’s dilemma is that the Lebanese-American’s dad voted for Donald Trump. Her show sets out to resolve it. By the end of a set conspicuously constructed for emotional catharsis, she’s done so – even if it requires a sleight of hand you barely notice till you’re halfway home. Harouni pulls off with supreme smoothness and control an autobiographical hour on her Staten Island upbringing and on the road accident that almost paralysed her for life.
You could wish for more liveness or looseness in your comedy – and that might come later now that Harouni’s got this precision-engineered debut under her belt. She’s UK-based, but the show is set in New York, among her “boring Sopranos” family. She brings the community vividly to life, and there’s a “parents say the funniest things” vibe – complicated just a little by dad’s Republicanism and Janine spending her teens attending anti-abortion marches.
There’s a fine punchline to the latter memory, and good gags throughout, not least the running one about her boyfriend’s over-compensating remark about menstrual blood. But soon the show takes a harsher turn, as Harouni is nearly killed in a car crash and told she may never walk again. One striking image – in a show that shines with filial love – finds dad drawing crosses in holy water on her wounded leg.
The injury and recuperation material sits a little at odds with the slick, smiling style of Harouni’s comedy. Her conclusion elides dad’s homophobia and his wider politics, as if fixing one (with thanks to a gay-best-friend character from central casting) absolves the rest. But if it sometimes feels facile, it’s performed with warmth and skill by a newcomer who’s clearly going places.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
