Review by Jo Forrest
The Harrogate Comedy Festival gives comedy fans in Yorkshire the chance to see some top quality comedians in some really intimate venues and this year is no different with venues across the town hosting the likes of Sara Pascoe, Ross Noble and more. Tonight it was the turn of Nish Kumar to perform in front of five hundred fans in the beautiful surroundings of the Harrogate Theatre.
Judging by the fact that the venue had a waiting list for tickets with not a spare seat available in the place, the Mock The Week panelist was clearly a popular choice with comedy fans in Yorkshire. Performing his “It’s In Your Nature To Destroy Yourselves” show, Nish Kumar hits the stage ready to rage. Usually restrained by the restrictions of mainstream early evening TV, in the live environment Kumar gets to cast off those shackles and really unleash his anger on the issues of the day. Be warned as well, this isn’t a light-hearted show full of cheap digs at Donald Trump or Theresa May, although they are targets. No, for the seventy-five minutes he has a microphone in his hand and no TV executive to tell him what he can and cannot say, this is his time and he will have his say. Brexit, politics, religion, celebrities and more come into his line of fire and when he unleashes, he goes in hard making it a brutal, uncompromising set full of social and political observation.
While most comedians these days play the racism card for cheap laughs, for Kumar it’s a real subject and one that he faces on a daily basis. Again, the comic deals with his experiences by pulling no punches and leaving you with no uncertainty about his opinions on this and more during an unrelenting seventy-five minutes of thought-provoking humour.
