{"id":3877,"date":"2019-03-18T12:06:06","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T12:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/?p=3877"},"modified":"2019-03-19T14:09:36","modified_gmt":"2019-03-19T14:09:36","slug":"nish-kumar-at-nottingham-playhouse-16-3-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/nish-kumar-at-nottingham-playhouse-16-3-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Nish Kumar at Nottingham Playhouse 16.3.19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Live comedy\u2019s all about timing. With \u2018The Mash Report\u2019, the 33-year-old Kumar has positioned himself as our prime political comedian, the only satirist doing what US audiences take for granted in \u2018The Daily Show\u2019. After a somewhat shaky start, it\u2019s established itself as the only UK topical news comedy worth watching, although, at six episodes per season, can\u2019t compare to its US equivalent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to deal with an ever-changing political situation? A show\nwritten some months back might not cut it, and Kumar has a rep to maintain. The\nlast week has been so tumultuous that I was curious about how Kumar would\nincorporate these farcical events into his set. I needn\u2019t have been. He doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a well-received warm-up set by Rosie Jones, weaponising\nher cerebal palsy, Kumar does go straight into Brexit, acknowledging that half\nthe city voted \u2018leave\u2019 while pointing out that his audience consists entirely\nof \u2018Guardian munchers\u2019 who didn\u2019t. We are, he points out, a so-called \u2018elite\u2019 that\nconsists of brown people and teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he\u2019s off Brexit quickly. This is not the Daily Mash. The\nonly up-to-the-minute material is about the Christchurch massacre and how the\nmedia treats white extremists very differently to Muslim ones. Generally,\nKumar, points out, he has it easy, because he has a Hindu name. Which doesn\u2019t\nstop him from being singled out at North American airports. Cue good anecdote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a sharp, engrossing, fast-paced hour and a half,\nwith plenty about family and a strong take on happens when your comedic heroes\nturn out to have feet of clay. The Simpsons, obviously. He\u2019s very upset about\nLouis CK but positively savage about Ricky Gervais\u2019s pathetic lampooning of\ntrans people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many highlights include an encounter with Dominic Raab in the Question Time studio where Raab greets the first brown person he sees as \u2018Nish\u2019, despite his bearing no resemblance to the comic, and \u00a0a history of the word \u2018gammon\u2019 in relation to Piers Morgan. The sweary show gets serious towards the end, when Kumar, acutely and economically, sums up how we got the double madness of Brexit and Trump. He should have stopped there, but doubles back to a black Jesus routine for the close, holding up placards of white actors who have played Christ, including, most ironically, Liam Neeson. It falls relatively flat, but that\u2019s live comedy for you: he\u2019s allowed to run out of steam. Outstanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\u00a0review\u00a0appears\u00a0in\u00a0today’s\u00a0Nottingham\u00a0Post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Live comedy\u2019s all about timing. With \u2018The Mash Report\u2019, the 33-year-old Kumar has positioned himself as our prime political comedian, the only satirist doing what US audiences take for granted in \u2018The Daily Show\u2019. After a somewhat shaky start, it\u2019s established itself as the only UK topical news comedy worth watching, although, at six episodes per season, can\u2019t compare to its US equivalent. How to deal with an ever-changing political situation? A show written some months back might not cut it, and Kumar has a rep to maintain. The last week has been so tumultuous that I was curious about how Kumar would incorporate these farcical events into his set. I needn\u2019t have been. He doesn\u2019t. After a well-received warm-up set by Rosie Jones, weaponising…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3877"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3884,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877\/revisions\/3884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}