Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

We take freedom of speech in comedy (within reason) for granted in the UK, but, thanks to the cohort of Indian stand-ups performing at the Fringe this year, we’re starting to learn more about what they can and can’t say on the burgeoning scene over there.

A couple of years ago Vir Das’s show, Wanted, covered the events that followed him receiving death threats for criticising societal inequality. And in his new show, Who Are You?, Rahul Subramanian refers to the moment when the subjects of one of his gags – DJs, of all people – came after him with cricket bats. He needed a bodyguard for four months.

As Anirban Dasgupta explains in Polite Provocation, you can’t make jokes about politics or religion in his home country, and you’re expected to put disclaimers on your social media posts lest folks take your quips literally and you get cancelled.

In India, he says, you write the joke, and then the apology, and the apologies are always funnier. It’s a case of ‘survival of the sorriest’, he adds.

But he’s found a loophole, and it comes in the unlikely form of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he describes as having been less a freedom fighter than a ‘freedom waiter’. The ideology that killed Gandhi is now in power, he argues, and the father of the nation is now no more than a distant uncle.  

Fake news, a big problem in India, also gets an airing. He covers all this with the lightest of touches, though, jokes and a ready smile cloaking his ire.  

Some of his strongest material relates to his fascinating birth story. The almost unbelievable details leading up to his parents having him unusually late in life are extraordinary, and would make for a compelling novel or film. They link with a great joke about India now having the largest population in the world. 

It’s an easy and illuminating hour from a likeable guy.

Review date: 11 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Ashley Davies
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard