In a year conspicuously short of stars, it is Omid Djalili's turn to announce himself as a fringe heavyweight. "Are you ready for the Iranian fat boy?" he shouts from backstage. "The undisputed Les Dennis of the middle east!" About 400 people roar their assent, and out he comes, dancing down his showbiz staircase in an iridescent purple shirt, having already delivered his best lines of the night.
Djalili's act centres on the one thing of which he is a master: accents. Posh, cockney, Yorkshire, French, American, Indian, Arab, Nigerian, he handles them all with accuracy and vigour. But his script sucks. He is a decent man, whose professed aim is to help reclaim the reputation of the middle east with a humanising display of (mostly) Iranian foibles. It works, a bit, but is more often predictable and worthy.
"We're all one planet, one people," Djalili ends the show. "I love you all!" The audience, who gave him a big round of applause for announcing that he was the first Iranian on Broadway, couldn't agree more. Yet they also seemed to enjoy his formulaic America-baiting, his observation that Germans are "Nazi bastards" with no sense of humour, and his joke about Jews, of course, being penny-pinchers. One planet indeed.
