The Asian Comedy Showcase was, in essence, a celebration of all the fantastic Asian talent at the Fringe – and what a gloriously fun celebration it was!

Hosted by Sam See, who was gracious enough to let me snap away in the corner, it was a collection of four asian comedians and one classic token white comedian, mostly giving a taste of their own (also hilarious) shows at the fringe. First, host Sam gave an introduction to the concept and comedians, as well as himself.

First up, was the fantastic Olivia Xing who discussed her experiences with racism in America and played on the way that sometimes racism can be a bit “boring”, and how people fail to be creative with it. It was a hilarious moment of reflection in understanding that victims of it are much less bothered by it, more so curious as to the next way an insult will be hurled at them and how. She discussed how it was particularly relatable during COVID with much racism focused on Chinese people and the generalisation of all East Asian people under one convenient branch to be racist towards, even if they don’t fall under that particular ethnicity. Her delivery was particularly fantastic and professionally reminiscent of the big British comedy names we see now.

When Sam returned to introduce his next guest, he got out a spritz bottle to cool his audience down, which was a fantastic touch and made for some brilliant moments for the camera!

He then brought on Chin Wang who largely focused her set on romance as a Chinese-British person. Having attended a university in Scotland at a time when there weren’t many students from East Asia in the UK, she was often subjected to “shipping” and being set up with the very few East Asian boys in her cohort, making the point that her white compatriots did not want to express racism but wanted to make them feel as comfortable as possible, inadvertently almost doing the opposite – with Chin getting a Scottish boyfriend! This was a humorous representation of the way POC may feel othered while the aim may not be to do that.

Thirdly came Ricky Sim, who largely focused his set on his father, in particular coming out to him and the emotionally-void relationship between Asian kids and their fathers. His father had tried to set him up with girls thinking his gayness arose from a shyness in talking to girls. This had the room in raptures, as the idea was quite bemusing to us all. He then explained the idea that every white superhero has a cool origin story, while the few Asian ones have had to work hard for theirs. This caused him to propose the brilliant idea that one hero should be told that they are loved by their fathers, prompting all their superhero powers to be bestowed upon them. This was comedic to so many as the realisation of that fragmented relationship can be difficult, but lightening it in comedy is always fantastic.

After Ricky, there was a short presentation of a token to the next act, Joe Mayo, who was the Token White of the show. This pin was clipped to Joe’s clothes after which he joked it was not going to stay on. This was comic later on as in the middle of a punch line, the token went clattering to the floor, causing the room to laugh. This idea of the token white was a fantastic role reversal of the usual treatment of POC in arts. Joe’s set was fantastic, as he touched on the difficulty of many older generations struggling with the idea of pronouns. Most funny to me was the punchline where he commented on how Heathrow airport as grammatically incorrect… it should be “Heathrows” or “Theythrow”. The set was hilarious and definitely one of my favourites of the show.

To end the show, Malaysian Rizal van Geyzel came up to give the audience a taste of his own full length show at the fringe. The set and his story kept taking more and more ludicrous turns, eventually ending in him being arrested for running a comedy club in Malaysia – partly due to a woman attempting to recruit for her sex cult on an open mic night, and partly due to the misunderstanding that his club named Crackhouse was a centre for drug use, rather than the play on words of cracking being a word to describe comedy. It was an interesting tester into his comedic style and a fantastic way to end out the showcase, leaving his show fresh in everyone’s minds.

All in all, this was a brilliantly unique show that showcased talent from across Asia and gave a taste of the style of comedy at the fringe and was an enjoyable hour!