Nish Kumar’s (no relation to JawkwardLOL’s Jess Kumar) show at the Civic this Comedy Fest has enough polysyllabic words to make you feel like a real intellectual when you can keep up. Yeah, take that everyone who said my undergraduate English Lit and Political Studies double major arts degree would go to waste.

He’s well-researched, well-presented and despite a few outbursts rather polite. Sounds more like a guest lecturer than a comedian, but for real he’s pretty hilarious.

Don’t be alarmed, he may use big words but his jokes aren’t so overly complicated that you miss the punchline because you’re too busy trying to make sense of it.

Kumar takes some difficult topics, like ethnic divides, gentrification (Jess’s favourite topic/buzzword ever), existential crisis, and colonialism, and relays his thoughts on them in a witty way that doesn’t alienate his audience.

Even if he’s talking about how if a white British guy turned up in a country, everyone there who wasn’t white were screwed…to a room full of white people. He’s not confrontational, but he’s prone to political rants that walk a tightrope between hilarious and hard-hitting.

However at some point he forgets a primer for a closing joke that he deftly (questionable) manages to work back in in order to close the show with somewhat off on a high. Was it on purpose? We don’t know, maybe? But if it didn’t slow the momentum of his show down then sure, some might say it was an avant-garde way of anticipating and quelling a lull.

Random thoughts during the show:

• Jess is definitely the drummer from Coldplay- that’s why she’s so money ballin’.
• Must remember the name of the documentary - damn it something…forgotten. But seriously if you’re reading this and can remember the name of the documentary he talked about, please tell me.
• Hmmm are hipsters a trend? More a fad, no? (Here’s that one postgrad class on popular culture kicking in.) Unless it has lasting effects on culture it isn’t a trend- it’s a fad. Kik, bebo and myspace? Fads. Social media? Trend- because it’s a fundamental change on how we communicate. But Hipsters well- crap I missed a joke, OR the name of that documentary- either way I lose- I gotta stop having boring internal monologues like this.
• I was too drop sacks to whoop when he said long reads, but I get down to long reads. I’m all about that long-form journalism. It’s what I do for a living, after all.
• Shit that was funny and pretty enlightening- everyone should get to one of his shows.

BACK WITH A NEW SHOW

WHEN: Sat 23, Tue 26 to Sat 30 Apr, Tue 3 to Sat 7 May
WHERE: The Classic, Auckland
GET TICKETS: Ticketek
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