A middling review for Urooj Ashfaq’s award-winning 2022 debut, which described her as “appealing to conservative tastes”, has thrust the young comedian from Mumbai reflexively into her bad girl era. Or, more accurately, it’s encouraged her to expose the side of herself that’s been present all along. From writing erotica online since the age of 14 to altercations with medical professionals, she’s laying it all out there.
The whole thing makes for a riotously funny hour, within the first five minutes of which it’s impossible not to fall for Ashfaq’s charms. She is a ray of sunshine with an albeit prickly edge to her persona, one that has her turning and shouting “stop having more fun than us!” at the wall that separates her show with the one next door that is also inducing big laughs.
Never navel-gazing or morose, this is perfectly pitched confessional stand-up. It’s like a night in with your bestie, rummaging gleefully through their shoebox of eccentricities (Ashfaq’s One Direction fanfic clippings, lovingly backed with glitter, for example). How to Be a Baddie is an irresistibly uplifting and surprisingly vulnerable insight into the comedian’s own deviance from the conventions and expectations of an Indian-Muslim upbringing.
Urooj Ashfaq: How to Be a Baddie, Monkey Barrel Comedy, until 24 Aug, 6.25pm (extra show 16 Aug, 2.50pm)