★★★★
We’re no strangers to the work of Aarian Mehrabani. As a theatre-maker with Flawbored, we nominated It’s a MotherF**king Pleasure back in 2023. It’s Mehrabani’s theatre background that shapes his first stand-up hour, commissioned by the Lowry. Starting as we mean to go on, Aarian asks an audience member to provide audio description of the room. This allows him to know where we are sitting and what our general vibe is. It’s a necessary but clever ask, because it immediately confronts the reality of Aarian’s visual impairment, and puts him firmly in control.
The sometimes obvious jokes about sexuality serve as easy fodder, but give way to surreal set-pieces, such as asking an audience member to ‘suck eggs’, taking the well-worn idiom about teaching grandmothers to its logical conclusion. His jokes about Hannah Gadsby and Netanyahu are brilliant, and impossible to explain.
The second half of the show deals with a serious medical crisis Mehrabani went through, and is a tone-shift that the audience aren’t expecting. It’s this rhythm of emotion, that makes the show feel like a play rather than stand-up, but perhaps its more a fusion of the two.
Mehrabani has created a show that no other stand-up can or will, and in a sea of samey stand-up at the fringe, I feel this has to be an essential show to experience.
Aarian Mehrabani: How’s Your Head? is on at Bluebell at Underbelly, George Square until August 31st
