Anirban Dasgupta: Cry Daddy. Soho Theatre.

A year on from his well-received show, Polite Provocation, Kolkata-born, Mumbai-based stand-up comedian Anirban Dasgupta returns to the Soho Theatre. The tone of Anirban Dasgupta: Cry Daddy is broadly the same: mild cynicism that periodically morphs into unexpected darkness, well-crafted gags, understated delivery, and some gentle digs at a variety of targets from Indian politics to family life to his own abilities as a comedian. Cultural references to the challenges and opportunities of life in Mumbai are likely most accessible to the predominantly Indian and British Indian audience. Still, there is much here that is universally familiar, and one can respect his sophistry as a comic without necessarily understanding what he is going on about.

The twist in Anirban Dasgupta: Cry Daddy is that the comic, like many of his cricketing heroes, has decided to retire from sports at the age of 36. The fact that he has done almost no actual sports in his life, and has no intention of ever participating in any, is beside the point. Retirement is the thing. “Life itself is a sport, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you do drugs,” is his way of commiserating with the large number of expatriate software engineers in the press viewing audience, whose sporting prowess it emerges is even more reduced than his own.

Life as a sport is reflected in the show’s structure. We get a football-style scoreboard on stage and a chance to score the man’s jokes. He gets a point if he tells a good one. We get a point if he delivers a dud. By halftime, he is down, 5 to 3, but that, he insists belligerently, is because we would not give him a good laugh for the first 12 minutes. It would be churlish to reveal the score at full-time, but “like Indian politicians at election time”, Dasgupta makes the rules and decides who prospers. Hecklers, of which there are a few, get a yellow card.

The jokes about 9/11 and suicide bombers might not suit all tastes. “Jesus Christ!” opines one audience member in apparent shock. “Wrong God”, quips Dasgupta, fronting up to the audience’s discomfort rather than swerving it. Scoring-wise, he gets a point, though. “Judge the joke, not the morality”, is our instruction. On that basis, he is a winner. The 60-minute show, “rather like life”, ends abruptly, and the randomly chosen audience captain gets to swap shirts with Dasgupta.

Writer and Director:  Anirban Dasgupta