With his dry, droll manner, rarely expressing more than the gentlest smirk, Shamik Chakrabarti is an unlikely questing adventurer. The Indian stand-up managed to debilitate himself playing football before a match had properly started. And he’s so nondescript that he blends into the background tedium of office life, successfully failing in jobs because no one notices him, his beta maleness mistaken for competence. If he stands out at all, it’s for his commitment to comic juvenility, at an age when most of his peers are forging respectable careers. And a reckless adherence to the rules of the road, utterly at odds with improvising fellow drivers on India’s highways.
So when he launches into his tale of leaving his laptop in a taxi, expectations are middling. Yet the recovery becomes a dark night of the comic’s soul, as he encounters frustration after frustration and acquires a level of self-awareness that causes him existential wobbles. Aided by an inexplicably committed police officer, set against broader indifference to his plight, the pair negotiate the difficulties of finding the tech with escalating narrative drama. And that’s despite very little actually happening, with Chakrabarti enlivening the story with wry humour and a sharp eye for its absurdity.
Shamik Chakrabarti: Despite Appearances, Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower, until 24 Aug, 9pm