Not very often do you come across a comedian who is their own warm up act. However, Shappi Khorsandi does exactly that and seems to actually enjoy it. Her current tour, Skittish Warrior, begins with a 30 minute what seems to be an improvised set where she laughs and jokes with the audience.
As Khorsandi delivers her material you can’t help but feel the term 'warrior' is appropriate for her - she has tried so many things and keeps on going. Being a female comedian in a male dominated industry can’t be easy, but being labelled as an ethnic minority and being a single mother to two children must be difficult. She jokes how she got an D in her GCSE Maths exam, retook it and got an E.
Khorsandi is Iranian born and is the daughter of a famous Iranian poet. This features quite heavily in her set and there is even a reasonably large Iranian fan base in the audience. She even tries to guess the names of the Iranians in the audience.
Many people will recognise Khorsandi from 2017’s series of, 'I’m a Celebrity….Get Me Out of Here', and of course she couldn’t complete her set without a gag about the series. I think it’s fair to say she wasn’t the biggest fan of the show and even jokes that she was the real winner by being voted out first and getting to stay in a luxury hotel while the other ‘celebrities’ sweated it out in the Australian jungle.
It’s interesting that Khorsandi has returned to The Lowry less than a year since her last performance at the venue. Having been in attendance on both nights, I can tell that some of the material from the previous tour has been recycled into this show. I’m pretty sure her tale about Amsterdam was in her previous show too.
Khorsandi did make the audience aware that she was on very strong painkillers after injuring her back and neck. Therefore, she did come across a bit more scatty than normal. Given the circumstances I don’t think she was on her best form tonight.
Reviewer - Brian Madden
on - 3/4/19
No comments:
Post a Comment