Shazia Mirza dislikes performing to Guardian readers, because we analyse silently, she says, rather than laugh. Well, I like a laugh, and there are a few here, but – at the risk of sounding over-analytical – arguments put forward by comedy still have to make sense.
Mirza’s bracingly outspoken new set has made a splash by addressing the flight of British schoolgirls to Islamic State. She weighs right in on the issue, with the confidence that comes from closely identifying with those teenagers and the devilment of a comic who can’t resist flouting supposed taboos. By the end, she’s made a passionate point forcefully – but there’s scattergun thinking en route.
By Mirza’s lights, that shouldn’t matter, as long as we’re laughing. And, for much of the show, it doesn’t, as she recounts life as a token Asian woman in the media, required to represent Islam by everyone except her fellow Muslims, who’d rather she shut up. Yes, her compulsion to shock, which spawns ho-hum asides about lesbians, Jews and Madeleine McCann, can get wearing – but it’s all in jest, and her now-deadpan, now-smirking attitude is endearing.
But the longer the gig goes on, the ropier the jokes get (duff puns, such as “Kor-Ann Summers” and “Bethnal Green Jihad-emy”, proliferate) as Mirza stakes a claim to a meaningful argument. It’s an argument that’s hard to follow, as she veers between conflicting attitudes to the departed schoolgirls. In one riff, the girls just want to lead a western life; in another, they flee because they hate the west. Now, Mirza harshly condemns their stupidity; now (if it makes the joke work), she feels their pain. This comes across less as nuance than confusion, before a sober concluding video asserting, under the hashtag #MuslimsAgainstIsis, that Isis was foreseen and proscribed by the Prophet Muhammad. Mirza’s fighting spirit is admirable; her comedy, a little less so.
• At the Tricycle, London, 1-3 October. Box office: 020-7328 1000
