Imran Yusuf - Bring the Thunder - 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Show Review
‘a fresh new comic voice…sharp, passionate and uplifting’ **** The Telegraph
Date of live review: Monday 8th Aug, ‘11
Imran Yusuf’s birthplace was Mombasa, his parents Muslims of Indian descent, but he was raised in Hackney, East London. (“I was born in the Third World, and upgraded to the ghetto.”) He insist that he never fitted in anywhere, yet appears far from bitter. Rather, his complex background here fuels a set that is, above all, an unflinchingly optimistic challenge to David Cameron’s famous assertion earlier this year that “[state] multi-culturalism has failed” – tragically incongruous in this dark week, but arguably all the more necessary too.
A garlanded Fringe newcomer last year, Yusuf is, then, a fellow with serious points to make. But this proud Briton always puts his case playfully, mocking both sides of the religious divide and even drolly fusing the two. His Islamic My Old Man’s a Dustman, for example, is very nicely done.
He wittily riffs on people’s vain attempts to pigeonhole him ethnically, on the lessons we can learn from the Arab spring, on growing up a Muslim in a predominantly white city. He also enjoys upbraiding us for our reactions to his material, twice twinklingly accusing us of racism for laughing at it.
Girls, too, have clearly been a source of angst for Yusuf in the past (join the queue, matey), and Bring the Thunder is also, in part, this nattily dressed but rail-thin fellow’s personally cathartic plee for women to use their “great power” over men with “great responsibility”. If Spider-Man can do it, he suggests, surely they can too – and, if this bid for romantic clemency is a little one-way, his stance is nothing if not humble.
So, a fresh new comic voice in a show that’s essentially a sharp, passionate and uplifting bid for people to follow their professional dreams (as he has) and be nicer to each other across all divides. Anything is possible, Yusuf insists. World peace. Even a white guy winning the 100m sprint. Just don’t let him hear you chuckling at such racially unsound material…
Review by Mark Monahan. The Telegraph
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