Armed with exhaustive statistics, a wild imagination and a uniquely hilarious take on current events and systemic conspiracies, Don Biswas delivers a frantic hour of lighting-fast stand-up. Biswas darts between ideas as he does across the stage, moving from pithy observational anecdotes about his job at a supermarket to enormous conspiracies about the world banking system. This feverish shift in tone invigorates his comedy, teasing the audience with the absurd. The lack of structure and messy delivery refreshingly works in his favour, as we are exposed to someone who, despite learning difficulties, thinks at a very high speed and in great detail.
Clever, funny and insane, I’d recommend this show to any left-leaning lover of the absurd.
Biswas’ takedown of various perceptions about his dyspraxia and Asperger’s, all delivered at the same time as he ridicules himself, proves to be among his most successful material of the night. His sharp, irreverent sarcasm for the way his condition is written about in medical journals send the audience into uproar. A persistent joke about his lack of coordination, as well as about insanity, ties the set together nicely. Though light-hearted when tackling disability and the pressures placed on him by traditional Indian parents, he is able to jump straight into a statistic or a terse political statement which deadens the air in the room, stops us in our seats and renders the atmosphere abrasively serious. This at times proves to be compelling, and at others trite.
The comic often sets up a joke with great tact, leading us into territory which has great potential yet stops short. One senses a timidity or aversion to longer, fully developed jokes, though he is a comic that is more than capable of them. The resulting effect can sometimes lead to hit and miss one-liners and nervous repetition rather than sustained and well-paced comedy. This being said, his fresh takes on current affairs are consistently hilarious. This will be the first time many audience members would have laughed with, and not at, a conspiracy theorist. At more solemn moments his sincerity cuts through the jovial atmosphere to reveal a great intellect, and an ability to correctly and resonantly sum up a certain political reality. Clever, funny and insane, I’d recommend this show to any left-leaning lover of the absurd.
