The best comedians exude confidence even when the audience isn’t quite on their side, and Rahul Subramanian is no exception. While this confidence might not stretch to his choices in life, he was more than happy to let the audience sit as he started his stopwatch, call out latecomers, and even stop and tell the audience to laugh at his jokes.
Much of his set talks about Mumbai and his ascent from college graduate to stand-up comedian: he mentions intentionally steering clear of more controversial topics, as he’s already experienced the corporate life and isn’t eager to go back. That’s not to say he’s not had his share of death threats, having offended the entire DJ community for months on end. There’s also quite a few jokes that are firmly rooted in the Indian context, and though he takes care to explain these for others, the effect is slightly diluted.
The pacing of his segments is good, with plenty of tangential jokes and rants but never losing sight of the core story he’s telling. These stories flow well into each other, with plenty of callbacks made to earlier jokes in the set: the entire last minute is effectively repeats piled one on top of the to form a crescendo that had the crowd in tears. There’s one brilliantly acted story about a motivational speaker which genuinely had some of the front row coughing and wheezing with laughter: the repeated phrases are still echoing in my brain days after.
Some of his early jokes didn’t quite find the purchase they needed though, with the room taking a little while to warm up before he really got started with his stories. Once the momentum was built up the audience was fully invested in the ride, but a few of the openers had polite chuckles at most.
Subramanian is clearly a talented comedian, and while there were some hiccups on the way it was an excellent show all in all: you won’t walk out enlightened, but you’ll be heavily entertained.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4*)
Gifted tickets in return for an honest review
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