Tokenism is one of the running themes of Shazia Mirza’s stand-up shows. Was she invited to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace because the organisers admired her talent? Could she even be sure that her Soho audience had come to see her and not Shappi Khorsandi, who was playing another room in the same venue?
She asks some provocative questions. The problem is that the Birmingham-born comic’s humour is so uneven that she risks coasting on her minority status. September 11 pushed her into the national spotlight: in the aftermath her name found its way into every current affairs producer’s Rolodex (remember those?). But how far has she developed since then? Multiple Choice is sold as an account of her experiences as a single woman coping with the pressures of parental expectations, religion and the ticking of the biological clock. Yet while she delivers a few crisp one-liners, there is also an uncomfortable sense that she is ruthlessly recycling old material.
Moreover, she quickly loses interest in the main theme. It is always a pleasure to hear about her impatient, when-are-you-going-to-get-married? mother, moustache and all, but we learn little that we did not already know. Although an atheist Irish boyfriend briefly enters the picture, Mirza is surprisingly coy about their relationship. Given that she whiles away a good part of the opening sequence by rifling through audience members’ bags, pulling out foundation creams and a ragtag of ID cards, she seems oddly reticent about her own emotional bric-a-brac.
Instead, she adopts a nervous, scatter-gun approach, wandering from subject to subject and briefly revisiting her years as an inner-city teacher. Her attempts to bounce jokes off the audience were slightly stiff as well: should she really be surprised to see so many Asians in the audience, and is there any mileage left in assuming that the sprinkling of white faces belong to Guardian readers?
She can be bracingly acerbic at times. As a Brummie, she is allowed to be rude about Bradford, and the couple who strolled into the theatre twenty-odd minutes late were mocked for running on Pakistani Time. As for the woman who made the mistake of coming to the show with a carrier bag from Primark, she could only watch as Mirza put the contents on display and made fun of her taste in knickers. The victim, still in her seat, took it all on the chin, but when she began to film her own humiliation on her mobile, a member of staff quickly gave her a telling-off. Ah, the irony.
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