Review by Steve Bennett

Don’t be surprised if Michael Che ends up being one of America’s top comedians... but he isn’t quite there yet.

His relaxed composure shows a masterful control of the situation, and his best material insightful, obtuse and damn funny. But the show is a stop-start affair as each routine runs out of steam and he filibusters until the next one. About two-thirds of the way through he almost grinds to a halt, putting a toe into extremely out-of-character hack material, then running the energy down to a whimper.

Maybe it’s the medications he’s taken for festival ills, but when a comic ends on a weary: ‘I usually like to end on a joke, but hey...’ that is not the climax audiences would hope for.

But let us concentrate on the masterly first 35 to 40 minutes, where this cool but cheeky comic makes an admirable first impression. ‘Suave’ and ‘debonaire’ are not necessarily adjectives usually attached to people from disadvantaged families from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, but that’s exactly what Che is.

He performs with an unexplained bottle of champagne on his table, that’s how he rolls. And in one routine about race he claims that ‘black people make things cool’ – a stupid generalisation, but one which, in his case, is unquestionably true.

His finest writing is as stylish as the image. Although he plays up his lack of education, in doing so he becomes the idiot savant, distilling down Islam or the democratic process to a smart line about why it’s not really for him. The joke’s on his simplification as much as anything. There are some edgier, and more considered, thoughts on the ‘N-word’, too, concealed behind that laid-back exterior.

But sometimes you wish he wouldn’t be quite so relaxed, as shooting the breeze about previous shows he’s had this run dilute the enjoyment of this one.

Quality starts to slide with an familiar routine imaging what the equivalent of ‘sexting’ would be before the technology existed – and then he references a news story in which a 23-year-old female teacher seduced a teenage pupil. His first thought was ‘that lucky bastard’. And his second and third thoughts, too, which leads to a dull (and morally dubious) routine.

But he’s a productive chap and already has some spot-on observations about Scotland based on this first trip. When this sly 30-year-old jokes about the fried food, or complains about the bagpipes, as every visitor must, he brings a fresh context to the punchline.

So a flawed debut, but let’s hope Che returns to Edinburgh before he’s too big for us. For he will sure be a force to be reckoned with.

Review date: 20 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett