Ahir Shah, Dress review: Pandemic jokes that fall down when it comes to politics

Shah explores the past 18 months of the pandemic in his new live show

Shah captures the contradictory emotions of the past year and a half, which has been both bizarre and mundane (Avalon)

How do you joke about the pandemic? Since comedy venues shut in March 2020, comedians have been trying to figure out an answer to this question. The industry would return, they hoped, but would it be to a nation so traumatised, they never wanted to hear the words “Covid” or “panic-buying” again? Or would this virus that’s killed 5 million people around the world become just another one of those things we joke about, like Brexit or queueing?

Tackling the topic in his new show Dress, currently running at the Soho Theatre, is Ahir Shah. Over an hour, the double Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee looks back at the past 18 months of his life, a time referred to as the “dress rehearsal for the apocalypse”. There’s an acceptance in both Shah’s material and his performance that this is not going to be a particularly “shocking return to stand-up”. After all, it’s the job of the comedian to share their specific observations about interesting life experiences, but as the comic points out, a) nothing has happened, and b) it’s happened to all of us.

Shah captures the contradictory emotions of the past year and a half, which has been both bizarre and mundane. We hear about the realities of living alone – “no one interferes, but equally, no one checks” – that led to him struggling with his mental health and getting scurvy (seriously), his desire to be a soup-making house husband, the worries that hugging his dad for the first time in months may end up killing him. The last is a genuinely touching story, cleverly undercut by Shah’s aside that if he had killed him, it would at least have been pretty funny.

It’s in these moments that Shah excels, infusing topical issues with his own personal touch while avoiding straight-up political satire. There are strong jokes about the ludicrous complexities of Ottolenghi recipes, which middle-class audiences will love, while a discussion about “woke capitalism” that culminates in him throwing away his microphone and repeatedly shouting “I love Lloyds Banking Group” is a moment of brilliance.

When it comes to politics, the ideas feel less fully formed. Even pre-Covid, jokes about Boris Johnson’s Bullingdon Club history felt pretty tired, and Shah’s don’t cover massively new ground. His insistence that Matt Hancock’s shudderworthy elicit tryst was actually very sexy – so sexy, in fact, that it made everyone forget about Covid – is a lot sharper, but there’s still something slightly off. Maybe it’s the relentless barrage of news and jokes from Twitter that’s left us with fatigue. Maybe it’s the fact that our political overlords feel so unmoveable at this stage that mocking them feels fruitless. I don’t leave Dress with a clear answer on whether joking about the pandemic is a good idea or not – but his attempt will probably be one of the best.

‘Dress’ runs at Soho Theatre until 13 November