Rubina Pabani and Poppy Jay employ anecdotal comedy and sketch to create a salacious show with a powerful political core.

After three series of their multi award-winning podcast, self-professed ‘British Asian gobshites’, Rubina Pabani and Poppy Jay, have engineered their audio smash-hit into a salacious live experience at Soho Theatre before embarking on a national tour. Opening with a comparison of which London skyscraper they would rather shag, really sets the tone – if you haven’t listened to the podcast, the show is silly, surprising and all about sex.

Mixing sketch, song and dance with their frisky yet frank chatter, the show translates well to the theatrical medium and spans tonally from interracial dating dilemmas to one-liners about curry-smelling, Tupperware-hoarding aunties.

The comedy sketches are chuckle-worthy, brimming with energy and handled playfully by co-directors Sam Hodges & Aneesha Srinivasan: in one memorable sequence, Jay and Pabani vigorously bounce atop space hoppers and grind against balloons to represent their first experiences of masturbation. And there is a gloriously Asian twist on Peggy Lee’s song (Brown) Fever which sees the pair click in time and gyrate against mic stands, whilst implying that Asian fetishism contributed to the fall of the British Empire!

Occasionally, the dialogue feels a little scripted and moments of audience interaction extraneous, but this is quickly overridden by the pair’s obviously natural and animated rapport. Designer Rosanna Vize’s fluffy, pink bedroom is reminiscent of many adolescent, sugar-fuelled sleepovers adding to the intimacy of their candid chit-chat.

But it’s not all brown-boy bashing and ‘coconut’ crime hotlines. Beneath a lewd outer shell, this production has a powerful political core – through their anecdotal comedy and a final recital of two personal letters, Pabani and Jay reveal the problematic elements of British Asian mentality. From colourism and sexism within their own community to the recent invasion of privacy by online trolls (through a very impressive literal staging!), their tales are a reminder of the shame many British Asian women carry vis-à-vis their racial and sexual identities.

Some might argue that this is a show made by brown millennials for brown millennials, but if I can bring my mum to a show about rimming and wanking over Keanu Reeves, and she still insists on getting cast autographs post-show, then it must be a hit.

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