Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

This is a tricky one. ‘Trademark observational’, ‘angry rant style’, ‘comedic gold’ on the blurb are all but absent from this shaky 45 minutes.  All credit given to Indian comic Biswa Kalyan Rath for performing in a third language, except this wasn’t really a performance, nor was it a show.

With heartbreaking honesty Rath told us straight off the bat that his jokes did not work in English, they don’t translate,  so the crafted work of an established comedian was straight in the bin. What he offered was a conversation, with every member of the audience, without pressure to join in.

The first 15 to 20 minutes of this group chat established that he had a very smart audience among the Indian members of the group, at least two PhDs students and a radiologist, which led to a pointless and brief discussion about curing cancer, was it good? Was people dying bad? No improvised gold yet.

He was hampered by his inability to understand several Scottish accents, or indeed other variations, including a rather aggressive man from Chicago  The audience tried to help by joining in, particularly an enthusiastic, brain-injured man in the front row who had genuinely brought his own jokes. It was the gig of nightmares for the poor performer with people speaking in tongues as far as he was concerned.

He tried a gag in Hindi, which may have raised a tiny titter with the Hindi speakers, then reprised it at great speed to prove how it didn’t translate (something about cooking rice with little bit of shit? Anybody?)

This was laborious, not funny – a long and personal routine about going to the sperm bank as part of a planned pregnancy, couldn’t land and was just a long masturbation routine;  open spot nonsense in front of various Indian matrons, simply unedifying.  At one point he apologised for the torture, but pointed out it was worse for him, and no doubt that was true.

The whole thing was unprepared and uncomfortable, but this clearly wasn’t the show he’d wanted to do. He carried off this humiliation with grace and didn’t blame the audience, which shows class. No doubt he will only get better by using this run as a work in progress to develop and anglophone set.

Review date: 5 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club