One of the worst things about Brexit, says Nish Kumar, was its timing, five weeks before the fringe. Bridget Christie had to rewrite her set from scratch and Kumar – one of the comics we turn to for thoughtful topical material – has created a substantial chunk of his show in similarly short order. It’s another strong hour of conviction comedy from the man whose 2015 show was nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award, a tour d’horizon of a Britain under the heel of neoliberalism, gentrification and the rich white male.
It starts with the only non-political material, which Kumar openly admits is tactical. But his anecdotes about going alone to music gigs are instructive about what’s to come, as he talks about flipping out when Prince makes his entrance through a trapdoor or whooping too loudly when David Bowie sings a Velvet Underground tune: his reactions are more vociferous than anyone else’s. It’s a quality manifest in his political comedy, too. Effronteries the rest of us might take lying down, Kumar is here to protest in the liveliest possible terms.
Take the different standards applied to racially insensitive politicos Ken Livingstone, Naz Shah (both expelled) and Boris Johnson (promoted). Kumar develops this into a routine about the historical immunity of the rich white man, ending in a very neat twist on the “some of my best friends are black” cliche. Take the lad culture of the 1990s, whose chauvinism he excoriates with amusing reference to the Spice Girls and – somewhat tangentially – the way Nigel Lawson named his daughter (“Go to jail, you weird man!”)
Lad culture crops up only because Kumar, unfashionably enough, is seeking to defend hipster culture, its more benign descendant. He argues we should train our fire on the politicians who created and sustain the UK’s dysfunctional housing policies, not the waxed-moustached cereal enthusiasts who benefit from them. It’s a strong section on housing, trading on Kumar’s status as a middle-class man of Indian parentage, half of whose identity is being catered to while the other half gets socially cleansed.
There are no gimmicks to the comedy Kumar is currently bringing us: this is just an excellently stitched-together tirade against a culture that penalises its poor for the sins of the rich – then pretends to be surprised when (via the Panama Papers, say) those rich people’s sins come to light. Broadly, Kumar gets the balance right between clown and preacher, gags and sober transmission of opinion. It’s a delicate line to tread, particularly in his closing routine about a racist heckle he received at the Comedy Store 24 hours after the EU referendum.
It’s a potent closer, because Kumar lets the incident score its alarming point about the state of the nation, while focusing on his own caught-on-the-hop reaction to it. In what Kumar describes as “a jalfrezi of an epoch” for Britain, this is a comic unafraid to make emphatic political arguments, while cheerfully submitting himself as their most hapless fall-guy or exemplar.
- At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 2 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
