Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

As a child growing up in India, Shalaka Kurup wanted nothing more than to be in therapy, an ambition sadly thwarted by a loving and stable family life. 

She quickly became aware that the feeling was a manifestation of a desire for attention and to be the centre of her own story, something that soon intersected with a love of performance.

Acidic, astringent and a little bitter, she certainly has the flavour of her stage persona locked down, as well as some interesting stories that glide over the top of her life so far. Her ‘PhD in trains’ and her time spent working on a mental health hotline are both juicy enough that you’re left looking for more, and she writes some sassy lines to go with them that demonstrates her facility in roast battles. However, she does have an aggravating habit of falling back on internet idioms for her punchlines. 

There’s a lot of ‘that Venn diagram is a circle’ and ‘god forbid a woman have hobbies’ sort of thing, which are no substitute for a self-penned line. This memetic approach also holds true for the entire last ten minutes of her show, in which she rigidly provides a callback to every single halfway memorable line from the preceding 50 minutes. Structure is nice to have, but this sort of thing can become a cage.

Kurup, one of this year’s cohort of Chortle Hotshot Fringe debutants,  also relies heavily on references to other forms of pop culture, with a number of routines about The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, House, Lord of the Rings etc. This is not an issue for the comedy (as long as you have a passing familiarity with her reference points) but does indicate an interesting relationship with Western culture as a whole. 

Early on in the show, she refers to therapy as a ‘cool white people thing,’ a viewpoint which it would have been interesting to interrogate more. As an Indian kid obsessed with many elements of Western culture and then finally moving to the UK, becoming part of a world that she idolised from afar, I bet there’s an interesting story to tell there.

But you can’t fit everything into a debut hour, and nor should you. Kurup has the solid building blocks of a stage persona, and she’s found the right pitch at which to operate. The intricacies of long-form storytelling have plenty of time to develop. 

Review date: 19 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard