Review by Steve Bennett

With kidnaps, armed robberies and insurgent firefights, it is a story guaranteed to be interesting. Though born in South London, Sameena Zehra grew up in the troubled Kashmir region – while her subsequent life has seen her visit the badlands of Kabul, Sri Lanka and other parts of remote India, thanks to various humanitarian missions that are never properly explained.

Not that the exact details are crucial; this is a story of how ordinary people react to extraordinary events – herself included, And the truth is a lot more prosaic than you might expect.

The matter-of-fact approach to peril also applies to Zehra’s delivery of her engrossing anecdotes, which leads to a emotive distance. There are stand-ups who would inject more passion into buying the wrong kind of jam than she does into a roadblock encounter with armed militia. While there’s a clear argument that real-life dramas have no need of being inflated by a comic’s trickery, she is a little too controlled and detached in her perfectly enunciated delivery of a carefully written script.

By then she’s no stand-up – or a rookie at best. Although this is a humorous slice of easy-going storytelling, for the comedy section of a festival programme, though, it needs more laughs to reinforce the wryness.

Still, it’s an engrossing tale, with highlights including the casual wisecracks of a UN pilot giving a mordant new twist to the familiar safety instructions and her viciously cursing grandmother, a recurring character worthy of her own sitcom – and someone more than a match for anything Al Qaeda could ever muster.

Review date: 8 May 2012
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton The Quadrant