Another day, another article in a right-wing newspaper claiming comedy is dominated by lefties.
Poor capitalists: they’re so oppressed. Nish Kumar has built his show around this increasingly strident, wilfully myopic claim. I don’t agree with all his conclusions, but his frustration at the argument, and at the wider plight of UK left-wingery, fuels an excellent show – urgent to communicate, unapologetically intelligent and technically impressive.
It starts with an unexpected gift. The gig is being illicitly filmed by an audience member, who, when pressed, explains that no one back in the US would otherwise believe Kumar’s combination of accent and skin colour. Handled brilliantly by our host, you could hardly wish for a more apt, or uproarious, accidental start to a show that addresses both race and retrograde thinking – although Kumar is just as interested in the trespasses of the left as how racists, sexists and BBC-bashers trespass against us.
The problem, he says, is that the left is bad at making arguments. On that basis, Labour’s leadership election would be improved were Kumar on the ballot paper: he shreds privatisation logic, delivers a telling anecdotal routine about the (privatised) NHS 111 helpline and proposes more alarmist names for climate change. Do these routines make him a “left-wing comedian”, as his mum has dismissed him? Here, Kumar argues (questionably, to my mind) that the alternative isn’t possible, that right-wing comedy – and indeed right-wing folk music – are oxymorons.
That’s a rare unconvincing moment; another is Kumar’s Bond movie theme parody. But his 007 riff does yield a masterly moment of technique, when a so-so analogy regarding the prospect of a black Bond is rendered hilarious by some adroit water-treading before the punchline.
At points, the politics feels undigested. More often, there’s the thrilling sense of Kumar’s comic instinct and moral fury working in harmony, to produce his most confident, compelling set yet.
- At Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
