Is standup the perfect meritocracy? That’s the story it tells itself, of a profession accessible to everyone, free of the elitism and barriers to entry that bedevil so-called high culture. Kai Samra has mixed feelings about that. As he chronicles in his show Underclass, comedy threw him a lifeline when nothing else would. But once he’d grabbed hold of it, it reeled him in only so far. TV people typecast him; racial slurs were bandied about in a workshop.
How do you prosper – or what else might become of you – in a world rigged against you from the start? Those are the themes of this autobiographical hour, which conjures with race and class as it recounts Samra’s West Midlands upbringing with his brother and single mum. He worships his alpha-male big bro, who gets a scholarship to private school but doesn’t fit in there and loses his way. A broken home is further broken; Kai ends up on the street. We live under a “follow your dreams” ideology, Samra reflects – but only some of us (hello, Brooklyn Beckham) have the remotest chance of reaching them.
In the telling, there’s nothing grim about this: Samra wears his social commentary lightly in a show that jokes about his cousin’s rivalry with classmate Malala Yousafzai and (weaker, this one) the paucity of Asian fancy-dress costumes. The set gets stronger as it proceeds after an opening that can feel glib – particularly the story about tracing his estranged dad, which begs more questions than it answers.
It’s in his fraternal relationship that the show’s heart lies. A closing set-piece finds Samra commissioned to interview Tommy Robinson, whom Samra proposes as a mirror-image of his elder sibling: an angry adult avenging the bullying and alienation he experienced at school. That feels like a stretch, but it helps Samra to the thoughtful conclusion – about how he fits in; about comedy, revolution and self-acceptance – of this arresting debut show.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
