Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

New York-based comic KC Shornima has a young Edna Mode thing going on. Tiny, with a cute bob, she delivers haughty, withering comedy in an upper crust drawl. 

Maybe it’s because she grew up in Nepal during the civil war and had her neighbours murdered by Maoist rebels, she could rightly claim to have seen it all. The boy troubles of her contemporaries register very low on her scale of interest.

Not that she’s interested in tackling weightier topics, either. Following a brief introduction to the unusual circumstances of her childhood, most of the show is formed of much more prosaic material about her dating life and the differences between men and women.

 It’s good that she pushes her acidic viewpoint about as far into unreasonableness as it will go (‘If a man wins an argument, that’s domestic abuse’) because the material itself is familiar in the extreme. She’s actually at her best when she relaxes a little bit, stops trying to write pithy witticisms, and just flatly reports things in the manner of Rachel Kaly. Her hard-edged, superior demeanour is enough of a comedic device in its own right, the lines themselves are pro forma.

You get the sense though, that she’s still a performer who struggles a little bit with being open, and uses the jokes as a shield. She says outright near the end that she’s uncomfortable with the Fringe’s tradition of emotional vulnerability, and as a consequence this show can feel shallow and resistant at times, like trying to get to know someone with very rigid interpersonal boundaries. 

A little out of her element in Edinburgh, she makes no obvious effort to adapt her material, and several routines fall flat or are complicated by a lack of familiarity with That’s So Raven, ‘college essays’ and Shaquille O’Neal.

With plenty of interesting biographical material to draw on and a great presence on stage, the ingredients are easily available for her to make more of an impact, but it’s hard to imagine her committing to another Fringe when the comedy clubs in NYC are open year-round.

Review date: 20 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard