Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

What a show of two halves Sachin Kumarendran’s Fringe debut is. The first, a fine showcase of distinctive, tightly-written gags – the second,  a confected, convoluted self-indulgence about the quest for the perfect fake Edinburgh poster quote, a topic of interest to virtually no one.

The good stuff up top is a series of sardonic, often self-deprecating jokes about how badly his career’s going, the grimness of life in Northern England (he’s from Middlesborough) and how it sucks to be single. Or does it? Kumarendran either does or does not have a girlfriend, depending on what’s required to make a joke work. 

There’s a great gag about the fantasy of dating a policewoman, and he often adds taglines analysing his material to yield extra laughs. He’s deadpan, not entirely emotionless, but with the attitude of an aloof commentator not laying bare his feelings. His timing and tone are very effective.

He makes a point of not wanting to pander to expectations that he’d draw on his ethnic background for a clichéd Edinburgh hour about finding a place between Asian and English cultures – which is probably a wise move given his emotional detachment and flair for dry one-lines. A gag about the sheer ‘foreignness’ of his name is as far as it goes.

We learn that he submitted an audition tape to Channel 4’s Shipwrecked – ironically enough while utterly wrecked himself. He’d taken LSD before filming it in the grounds of a stately home, and behind glazed eyes he tells producers it was his own gaff. You can understand why they never picked him, although he was more successful in getting on to a different reality programme, allowing him to put a BBC One logo on his poster.

This section opens the door to the Powerpoint-led chunk about the poster quote, a story of meandering nonsense built on a tower of dodgy premises.

It starts by him wanting a quote to promote his show. He decides he wants it from an A-list comic. Then, better yet, a fake one, to avoid ramifications. He decides Russell Davies, would be a convincing name since there are many Russells and Davieses in the business, so starts to track someone of that named down. You following? Cue a trawl of the internet in which he found that one of them made a dubious tweet which we can mock - ha ha this nobody’s an idiot! 

Someone finally obliges with the required endorsement. It’s a success, I suppose, but it’s so hard to invest in any of this triviality. And I surely can’t have been the only person who couldn’t get Doctor Who showrunner and It's A Sin writer Russell T Davies out of my head when he talked about this ‘fictional’ geezer.

Dave Gorman was contacting people who shared a name almost 25 years ago, for a show which had purpose and a through line about the nature of obsession. This is a bloke dicking around on Facebook for a bit to fill some time.

It's such a disappointing ending to an hour that started so strongly. It feels as if Kumederin has spoiled his chance at making a stunning Fringe debut by coming with only half a show.

Review date: 24 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Just The Tonic at The Caves