Shappi Khorsandi - Asylum Speaker, Pleasance Dome <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->
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Your support makes all the difference.By her own admission, Shappi Khorsandi has sorted her life out. By the admission of others, she has consequently grown as a comedian. But she still has some major baggage left, and this show is a mixture of her showing off her stand-up skills and exploring the big story about her family upbringing that has garnered her a chunk of press coverage before her show.
Khorsandi's father was an Iranian satirist, working from England as a journalist. He supported the Iranian revolution in 1979 - only to find things worse under the Ayatollah. After gaining asylum status "before it became fashionable", the Khorsandis still had to deal with an assassination plot against the father.
There's obviously quite a story here, hence a lot of contextualising and storytelling for Khorsandi to do. This rather overtakes proceedings about halfway through, but until then her gag hit-rate had been high. For example: "I'm a female Iranian stand-up. They call me the box ticker... I'm proving that women can appear onstage without a pole."
The crowd-pleasing stuff is accompanied by some nice family history - how she and her sister were known as "Shakatak" and "Pavement" at school, and how her parents didn't believe in organised religion and explained it to her thus: "It's all a meaningless void... Happy birthday." This may not be the best vehicle, but Khorsandi has star quality.
To 28 August, except 14 August (0131-556 6550)
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