A comedic voice for the future
Diya Shah dreams of being on Pointless Celebrities – she’s already featured on Pointless (and on Only Connect). Will her comedy dreams lead to the (self-decribed) microcelebrity level for Pointless Celebrities? Or are the realities of the real world set to scupper her plans? This is the existential question being covered in her debut hour – Diya Shah? Diya Shan’t.
Set in her childhood bedroom – having recently graduated from university with a linguistics degree and moved back home, we explore the decorating options open to her – from her childhood drawings of Simpsons characters to pillows with AI generated images of Richard Osman.
We take a journey through her escapades with tarot reading (and gag with the audience), to breaking down back-handed compliments at university and friendship confessional, through to her TV appearances on Pointless, and her previous Fringe experiences, as well as some jokes written by her 5yr old self.
This is all told with an endearing sweetness to her comedy, combined with a heavy streak of self-deprecation, raising giggles from all sides of the audience. Diya is still very early in her comedy career, having picked this up at university, which shows a bit in her stage-craft (there’s quite a bit of nervous pacing) and there’s not quite enough content to fill 50 minutes, but this will come with more time and polish.
Where this show really gets some fire is in her depictions of her previous stage time and being at the Fringe – there’s a fun tale of missing out on a musical, but levelled with the apprehension of being chosen because she ticks diversity boxes in all-white crowds, rather than being there on her own merits. I’d love to hear her expand on this in the future as there is (understandably) a real passion and anger here.
Judging by Diya’s rebellious reaction to being told not to look up her name when these TV episodes air, I’d guess she’s also the type to ignore advice about avoiding reading reviews, so I’ll finish with a little appeal.
To Diya, please listen to your heart (and the inner child who wrote jokes about Tony Blair) – your voice is important and deserves to be on the comedy stage. So in whatever format or options that become available, please go out and keep trying to get the stage time you want to develop your craft, and see how far you can go. Your future Fringe audiences (and Pointless Celebrities viewers) will be grateful you did.
“Diya Shah? Diya Shan’t” runs to 23 August, at 12:40 at TheSpace @ Surgeons Hall. Tickets can be bought from: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/diya-shah-diya-shahn-t