Review of the touring political polemicist at the Brighton Dome Comedy Festival

Performing in the liberal heartland of Brighton, as part of the Dome venue’s comedy festival, Nish Kumar characterises the city as the domain of the ‘lefty malcontents’. His people, in other words.

He’s inevitably preaching to the choir, with a very wide-raging show that’s frequency punctuated by rounds of applause in appreciation of his sentiments, But if Nish, Don’t Kill My Vibe is part political rally, it’s a powerfully delivered one – as packed with full-throated, full-throttle, righteously angry invective as ever.

When Kumar first booked in these autumn tour dates, he feared it might clash with an election that could spike his guns. But even though the ballot came early, it has not affected his material too much: the Tories are still very much, as expected, in the firing line. The current government escape much censure, just a few seeds of discontent

If you thought Rishi Sunak’s ascension to Prime Minister might have been provided Kumar with some source of British Asian pride, however conflicted (as it did to fellow comic Ahir Shah), you can’t have been paying attention to his body of work.

And while the talking points in this show are sometimes familiar – calling Nigel Farage racist, saying Liz Truss killed the Queen –  there’s also an intelligent wider analyst of the last 14 years of Tory rule beyond simple name-calling. Although that is the fun bit, with every brutal insult as inventive as it is heartfelt, especially when aimed at a political class that has scapegoated immigrant communities to devastating effect. 

Some of the subject matter is even tougher than talking about racists on the rampage, as he ventures into the war in Palestine. He has to, he reckons, as if you don’t speak out on Gaza when you speak out about other issues, your silence is complicity. Of course it’s harder to get laughs from the killing of innocents, so the serious points are leavened with jokes around the periphery, such as slagging off Richard Madeley.

There is some consolatory talk here about the need to respect people even if you disagree with their opinions – thought that’s hard to take from comedian with strong tendency to call anyone he disagrees with a ‘cunt’. To their face if he can, or at least their motorcade. Yet the extremes of his reactions to everything political is made part of the joke.

He takes swipes at other comedians, too. Sometimes with affection when it’s about his mates with their big-money podcast gigs (and yes, that is jealousy talking), less so when it’s those he sees as cosying up to the right-wing, from Ricky Gervais to the ‘unnamed British comedian’ with whom he had a stand-up row.

This segues into how young men are being radicalised into misogyny, and on to the weird, delusional obsessions of billionaires such as Bryan Johnson, the man devoting his life and fortune to reversing the ageing process. 

When Kumar talks about getting old, it’s not light, universal observations about creaky joints, but bleak reminders of mortality and other such deep existential questions. He’s so very intense about everything, and a running joke is the fact he can’t do light, relatable, everyman stuff about the contents of his fridge – it has to be terrifying thoughts about the state of the world.

Delivering at more words per minute than seems possible, Kumar is all anger, all the time. And that’s both on stage or off, he informs us, this is no character act. He sympathises with those seeing his true personality, not the sanitised version we saw on Taskmaster.

The final part of the show asks why he’s like this, something a little more personal from the political polemist, going deeper than he did in his last show.

Describes himself as ‘arrogant but not confident’, Kumar ascribes much of his full-on personality to an anxiety disorder, possibly inherited from his mother, for which he’s now getting therapy (though, every the contrarian, he never quite believes the expert diagnoses).  

The people of Brighton have a different opinions and insist he has ADHD, triggering a funny back-and-forth with the audience, especially about all the fun drugs he could get to alleviate his condition.

But his issues are real, as evidenced by the story of him losing his passport and then descending into a shame spiral of what an idiot he is. Even the most straightforward of anecdotes – such as the football injury that means he’s performing this gig from a stool –  feeds into something bigger.

This tale wraps up with a weak pun, but then Kumar elegantly loops back all the themes of the show in a way that doesn’t seem overly contrived, but underlining just how wide-ranging his state-of-the-world show has been, and funny too.

To stick to his progressive brand, Kumar couldn’t have chosen a better warm-up act than a Middle-Eastern Welsh lesbian, who plays on white liberal guilt.

And after getting such teasing of our sensibilities out of the way to wonderful effect, Leila Navabi turns to longer stories about the low-budget efforts she and her girlfriend have been making to become mothers, from BOGOF deals at the fertility clinic – which revealed something very unexpected –to a DIY insemination.  Aptly, she’s got the delivery skill to have the audience so invested her story that we’re always pregnant with expectation…

The tour marked the last night of the long-weekend  Brighton Dome Comedy Festival, celebrating the reopening of the venue’s revamped Corn Exchange and Studio, revamped as swanky,  high-tech spaces, still boasting that ‘new car’ smell. The latter is almost unrecognisable from its former incarnation of the Pavilion Theatre. 

The late Addison Cresswell, boss of the Off The Kerb talent agency, used to run a Brighton Comedy Festival here, so this is a welcome renewal of that focus, from a venue that already hosts a plethora  stand-up tours around the year.

» Nish Don’t Kill My Vibe is on tour until November 28. Nish Kumar tour dates.

Review date: 28 Oct 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton Dome