REVIEW: Extra Ordinary, Manoj Prabakar, EdFringe ★★★★

Manoj opened straight away talking about how the room was cramped and he wanted to give you the authentic Indian experience of cramming you in for the show. It’s a great early ice breaker.

Manoj is performing this show entirely in a second language which is very impressive as you can’t tell with the confidence and delivery of each of his jokes. Guiding you through an hour of observations on differences and similarities between both the UK and India, for example cars stopping to let him cross the road for one.

He uses this linguistic tension to explain how he can’t understand English lyrics outside of the title of songs, humming them and then singing the title very loud. It’s an astute observation on how often people can mumble and distort their singing which isn’t always accessible to none native speakers.

Towards the end he has a bit about being anti-woke focusing on how he feels that he can’t call larger people fat anymore – I felt as though this didn’t translate well to a British audience as it was hard to tell if it was tongue-in-cheek or if he really thought these things. This was the only real section I felt where a bit of adapting to a different audience wouldn’t have gone a miss.

He ends talking about Buddha and how he’s everywhere in many different forms and how Buddhism is the religion where there are no negative connotations when you say you’re a follower of it. It’s nice rounding metaphor for the show and how we should all aim to be less judgmental about each other.

The show is about how really there aren’t too many differences between people and the reason this set is largely unaltered from the one he performed in India is to highlight that things are more universal that you think and if people can find the same material in India and in the UK funny then really there isn’t too much that actually separates us all.

Smart, funny and measured, a strong hour from a leading Indian comic.

Recommended Drink: Rum and Coke, fun and lively.

You can catch Extra Ordinary at Pickle Studio at Greenside at Riddles Court until 23rd August at 18:20 (55 mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.