Review by Marissa Burgess

Many of the comedy shows at the fringe add gimmicky elements to the stand -up – song, dance, sock puppets… but it’s not often that addition is Marxist philosophy.

Even Chris Addison only went as far as the periodic table and Robin Ince, cosmology, but Chow has taken the brave move of explaining Marxist theory to the masses. He has just completed his PhD, works as a lecturer and is clearly an intelligent bloke, but when he looks at his reasons for his communist slant on the world, it has more to do with his family than his education.

Chow is half Chinese, half Filipino and grew up in Canada. Though his father left China during the Cultural Revolution, he still held dear the ideologies of communism if not the corrupt regimes that perverted its theories.

As the son of immigrants he is inevitably suspicious of those whose politics pretend that everything is well with the world apart from ‘that group over there,’ the blame the minority attitude favoured by the majority bit of the current government.

After a couple of amusing anecdotes, Chow gets down to the meat of his show, picking up a textbook and announcing the first bit of theory from which he is working. You begin at this point to wonder that he might be about to deliver a lecture with a few gags sprinkled in it. But the pattern is a bit of theory followed by a chunk of stand up; the material ranging from his Filipino aunties, the guy in his local organic bakery and Cheryl Cole. Plus there’s some rapping in Korean just for the pure hell of it.

It’s an ambitious show that doesn’t quite gel but nevertheless it’s interesting to sit and listen to Chow’s views, stories and ideas. You certainly get the impression he’s a popular lecturer at his Uni.

Review date: 17 Aug 2010
Reviewed by: Marissa Burgess