Review from the Women In Comedy festival

Like many an immigrant comedian, Stanela Khalil understandably uses her status as a cultural inbetweener to drive her comedy – too Irish for Beirut, too Lebanese for Dublin.

A nice bit of structure in her debut show comes from her considering how her social circle in cosmopolitan Dublin comprises vegans who love vintage clothing and spiritual practices – things she recognises from back home, but only from people who are too poor to afford meat or new clobber. Joking about fortune tellers in the Arab world is certainly territory she can stake out as her own, while her gag about the ‘pre-loved’ euphemism is a neat one.

An engaging presence, Khalil playfully tells how her demographic made her a ‘Karen’ of the Arab world, while confessing a certain naivety before her move to Ireland, where she became the ‘diversity token’ in a tech firm, and everyone assumed her olive skin meant she was Spanish. 

She can be over-chatty, and there’s potential to tighten the writing, as not everything needs to be a long story and there’s knowledge of the likes of sporrans and Pavlov’s experiments that she can probably afford to assume.  

Likening Lebanon’s history to a cramped flatshare is a simplistic device that becomes convoluted – inevitably, given the nation’s troubled past. But it does its job of educating us without feeling too much like a lesson. The main takeaway, however, is her confusion at those who insist on putting the definite article before the name of her homeland.

Talk of cultural differences is to be expected from an immigrant comic’s first hour, but there’s more to Khalil’s arsenal, as she finds her own, consistently amusing, take on that most universal of topics: dating. 

She’s winningly candid about no-strings one-night stands and the gamut of experiences from bad boys to kindly nerds. The younger men she’s been out with don’t come out particularly well from her tales of their immature behaviour or attempts to indulge a kink while on a budget.

The frankness is appealing, as is her no-nonsense attitude, which she ascribes to being a child of war. Wherever it comes from, the ‘don’t-have-time-for-this-shit’ standpoint cuts through first-world indulgences, yet is always delivered with a smile.

Beirut-ish is a confident debut from a comic setting out her stall, demonstrating she’s got the comedy chops on both the topics where she automatically has a USP, and more commonplace subjects where she’s successfully managed to find one. 

Review date: 6 Oct 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett