Review of the visiting Indian comedian at Soho Theatre

Shamik Chakrabarti’s title, Despite Appearances, suggests we shouldn’t judge a book by a cover, but he seems to be very much the mild-mannered, easy-going personality that his bespectacled look first suggests. 

The only deviation, perhaps, is he isn’t quite so dependable as he seems – and even then his actions are far from reckless. Leaving a laptop bag on a Mumbai tuk-tuk could happen to anyone, even if doing so makes the comedian feel so stupid he wants to smack himself in the head in frustration.

He spins this yarn out expertly, layering up his self-loathing at being so foolish, worrying how he could never tell his stereotypically demanding Indian parents, and detailing the encounters with police, variously dim, dismissive and determined as he tries to track down the vehicle concerned.

It’s a great example of mountain-out-of-molehill storytelling, growing the anecdote until it becomes the best in his arsenal. No wonder he strings it out over three sections, giving the show some semblance of structure.

However, we only get to the start of this after more than ten minutes of low-level preamble, repeatedly stressing his awkwardness and his limited energy, demonstrating his inability to do slick crowdwork to fire up an audience. He makes a few comments on how quiet and sluggish we are as a crowd, but can’t entirely be on us.

Similarly, rejecting some of the conversational conventions of stand-up means segues can be as blunt as: ‘This concludes the animal section of the show’ after he recalled a disappointing tiger sanctuary he went to – a relatively flat segment of the show anyway. 

Elsewhere he has stronger routines on learning to drive in India, where few motorists are sticklers for the rules of the road compared to America, where he lived for four years. A punchline referring to school shootings  there seems uncharacteristically edgy on the day of an attack in Minneapolis – though there’s not many weeks when such a line won’t have a tragic resonance.

Generally, though, Chakrabarti depicts himself as something of a useless man-child, the sort of beta male who injures himself on the football field in the most pathetic way. 

But his father is the real nerd, obsessed by documentation, while adhering to some other old guy archetypes: talking about sport to avoid conversation involving real feelings, and being easily duped by fake news, particularly – for some reason – those stories claiming Sylvester Stallone has died.

Some of these details reappear in different anecdotes, creating a satisfying coherence to the show and emphasising  his expertise at weaving something out of next-to nothing. Even if the stories are slight, he makes them engaging, his low-key delivery also compelling us to lean in to listen.  

• Shamik Chakrabarti: Despite Appearances is at Soho Theatre until Saturday

Review date: 28 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Soho Theatre