White audiences struggle to believe, says Sami Shah, that there’s any such thing as a Pakistani comedian – as if “laughter is a western construct”. Shah is visiting from Karachi via western Australia, where he migrated (he says) to escape terrorist attacks and random muggings at gunpoint. The developed world’s dangers – shark attacks, casual racism, a weeklong run at Soho theatre – hold little fear for him, he says.
That’s the schtick: Shah is slick and high-status, he’s seen it all before and – despite being only 36 – is cynical about most of it. The least appealing section of his show describes his pushy parenting and disdain for everyone else’s children. There’s also a section – unconvincing, because the difficulty is exaggerated out of all proportion – on how, as an atheist, he struggles to answer his five-year-old daughter’s existential questions.
At such moments – there’s another one about Isis being angry because they’re all so ugly – Shah sounds a tad glib and insincere; his misanthropy seems an easy posture. He’s on more solid footing when he addresses his own experience of mutual racial misunderstanding. There’s a fine routine about the supposed higher value of white people’s lives, and another – amusingly subversive from a white perspective – when he takes for granted our agreement that serial killing is an exclusively white crime.
It’s a short set, ending after only 45 minutes. And it’s not tailored to his London audience: a substantial section is conspicuously Aussie-centric. But when Shah tones down the wise-guy persona and comes clean about his lived reality – “an atheist forced to defend Islam from racists”, as he describes himself at one point – it makes you want to hear more.
• At Soho theatre, London, until 9 May. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
