Sunil Patel oozes funny like a jammy doughnut running down a diner’s chin. Sometimes looking at his expressionless facade, I wonder whether he even realises how funny he is.
This is a great debut show.
His show, called Juicer, has absolutely no relevance to his set at all, bar one joke about a juicer, which he claims is his “get out of jail free” card. This in itself is funny, because it illustrates Sunil’s personality in a nutshell.
Sunil’s debut show is, unsurprisingly, all about himself. He asks his female friends for a list of his characters flaws, which is both brave and again typical of Sunil’s warped sense of humour. After dissecting a couple of the watertight flaws, he moves into storytelling mode explaining his upbringing, likes and dislikes, and his Hip Hop DJing career.
It’s worth going to watch Sunil to experience his unorthodox yet crafted way of explaining the complex mind maze of who is the man and who is the comedian. Cellar Monkey, being nearly a mile away from the thick of the Fringe hullabaloo, naturally makes this show difficult to populate. Momentum was lost due to a severe lack of audience members, however, with a full crowd this show has the potential to dazzle.
A few jokes fell short of his normally cleverly constructed pieces such as when he compares the Hip Hop struggle in New York to Bath, where he grew up. This may be because he hadn’t found a strong enough punchline to carry the joke material through. Sunil’s humour is intelligent and therefore not appropriate for anyone who likes an easy laugh, because soon as Sunil starts speaking he gives the impression of someone who got ten As at GSCE.
With a larger crowd and the polishing up of a couple of punchlines, this is a great debut show. Oh, and yes, you do get to hear the joke about the juicer.
