✭✭✭✭
Early on in her new show, Shaparak Khorsandi tells her audience that they won’t learn anything from this show, there are no big messages, and they might even come out of it knowing less than they did when they went in. To most of the audience this is probably a green light that says there is nothing to worry about, this show will be a good stand up and not try to be anything more.
In spite of this, when she goes on to quickly reveal that she has been diagnosed with ADHD, something that should really now be renamed as the comedian’s illness, there are probably more than a few people thinking, oh no, not another one, and wondering whether all London based comedians have the same GP.
When she moves away from this and back to more observational comedy, with topics including the difference between her attitude to men and sex in her twenties and men and sex now, the quality of the set and reaction from the audience noticeably lift.
It’s now 25 years since she made her fringe debut, which is the same amount of time that passed from her birth to that debut. It gives her a lot of rich material to draw on as she charts the passage of time, the way her attitudes have changed, the differences in her reaction now to people doing what she did when she was their age, and how her own children are growing up.
It’s a comedy of shared experiences, made all the more amusing by being told with an honesty that probably wouldn’t come out in conversations amongst small groups of friends. Khorsandi knows her audience, and even if she maybe does stray outside of what they want from her early on in the show, it’s a small diversion and the overwhelming feeling at the end is that it’s a solid hour of great comedy perfect for the Edinburgh crowd.
Pleasance Courtyard, to 27 August
Leave a Reply