Kev Orkian: The Illegal Tour
Live Review

You might have seen Kev Orkian on Britain’s Got Talent last year when he initially wowed judges with his hilarious routine based on learning Elton John’s I’m Still Standing from a sticky CD.

It’s a brilliant bit of musical comedy, performed fantastically, although nothing else in his Edinburgh debut comes close. He is an appealing entertainer and gifted pianist, but his end-of-the-pier style and material is terribly dated.

His shtick is that he’s an Armenian illegal immigrant, and the entire act is based on the dubious comic power of a silly overseas accent and occasional malapropism. (‘I’m a big Elton John fanny…’ for instance). His is an simple Donald Gill seaside postcard view of the world, where foreigners are inherently funny, gay men are camp, limp-wristed queens, and a double entendre as blatant as ‘I’ve got a really big one!’ is the height of wit.

There are a few old pub gags thrown in, and a couple of rather uncomfortable jokes about Birmingham being full of Asians. Mind you, he recently supported Jim Davidson, so maybe something rubbed off.

Two things, however, save this from being as dire as this description sounds. First, he is an absolute charmer. The broken English gives him a naïve vulnerability, enhanced by his cherubic face, and he certainly makes the most of the childlike innocence he convincingly portrays.

Second is his stunning talent on the keyboard, raising the roof with his nimble-fingered boogie-woogie or impressing with his deft classical medley. He only spoils it by trying to be funny, with the lamest of rewritten song lyrics. Reinterpreting Abba for Indians, Money Money Money becomes Curry Curry Curry – that’s the level of sophistication. And in a spoof five-minute immigrants’ musical, he changes the last word of the line Don’t Cry For Me Argentina for Armenia and doesn’t even bother with any more. I’m not sure whether we should be grateful it’s so brief, or furious that it’s so lazy.

Yet it gets a laugh, and although the audience is tiny, they seem to love every minute. One woman even arrived wearing a home-made Kev Orkian T-shirt, which is more than a little worrying. But he’s clearly got his fans, and is technically brilliant at what he does. It’s just that what he does belongs in 1978.