Someone told Sami Abu Wardeh that if he wants to do “hardcore anti-fascist material”, people need to get to know him first. Having played to the kind of crowds that draw the line at joking about genocidaire and international war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu kicking the bucket, he winkingly obliges.
The Irish-Palestinian comedian’s rambunctious new hour rattles through his council estate childhood taking the “designated racist of Year 2” under his wing (slurs lacked pizzazz), growing up in Dubai’s red light district (home to society’s undesirables – “bankers”), and his life now in Battersea, with all the vim of schoolboys singing 1997 hit song Men in Black on repeat in the back of a minibus. Yes – you’ll hear him do it many times, but it’s a bewilderingly good cover. People have turned on Will Smith, the comedian remarks glumly. No idea why.
It’s a show where a slow-burn joke’s payoff feels just as sweet as one incredibly inspired, stupid face: where somehow, we get to glean battlefield wisdom from Abu Wardeh’s resistance fighter father, but also hear that man’s grown son doing an impression of Mario and Luigi jerking each other off. It’s a shame there isn’t quite as much hatred as it says on the tin, maybe. When Abu Wardeh rages over the hypocrisy of society’s tolerance for hate until it’s directed at the architects of a genocide, it’s so cathartic you never want the tirade to end. But a memorable ending about the limits of the “power of clowning” is retrospectively moving: a metonym for the impotence we all undoubtedly feel, faced with so much structural oppression. Besides, we should already know who deserves our hatred. And that the unlikeliest allies – like comedy – can come from the darkest of places.
Sami Abu Wardeh Hates You, Pleasance Courtyard, until 30 Aug (not 17), 10pm