Tez Ilyas review – clever comedy about British National Pakistani life
Soho theatre, London
Light-hearted but trenchant, Ilyas’s show Made in Britain keeps the audience on their toes as he focuses on what unites, rather than divides us
After the EU referendum result, says Tez Ilyas, conversations about race and identity need to take place. Hence his current show, Made in Britain, which stakes a light-hearted but trenchant claim for the Britishness of his “BNP” – British National Pakistani – life so far. Ilyas is a cheeky chappie from Blackburn, more Opportunity Knocks than op-ed, and his show can easily be enjoyed as perky comedy. But he doesn’t soft-soap his indignation that some would consider him, and people like him, insufficiently British – and his show makes a persuasive counter-argument, thanks in part to its peaceable good humour in the face of such provocation.
A balance is adroitly struck from the off between ingratiating himself, and playing up his supposed difference. The opening routine, about the N-word, defuses tension by asserting his own, very British angst about political correctness, then follows up with some larky dancing to south Asian music. A later neat joke finds him struggling to remember the approved current terminology for white people; another – finding common cause with his likely audience, then instantly “othering” himself – tells us that: “Personally, I voted to remain in the European caliphate.”
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An audience volunteer tells our British-Pakistani host that in the US he’d likely get described as Indian
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