The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with over 3,700 shows. This year, Playbill is on board our FringeShip for the festival and we’re taking you with us. Follow along as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, aka our real-life Brigadoon!
As part of our Edinburgh Fringe coverage, Playbill is seeing a whole lotta shows—and we’re letting you know what we think of them. Consider these reviews a friendly, opinionated guide as you try to choose a show at the festival.
Ahir Shah is royalty. Not comedic royalty, despite his many accolades. He's the ”Prostitute King,” according to the Arabic translation of his name, that is. Shah’s name, to Arabic speakers, may come off as a hilarious choice for the stage to fellow comedians and audience members, but to the white, British people he grew up alongside, his name is a signal of his otherness.
In Ends, Shah contemplates the beginnings of his family’s immigration to England from India and the ways the British Isle has, and hasn’t, progressed since his grandfather’s arrival in 1964. The show, which debuted at the festival last year as a work-in-progress, was shaken a bit by its director, Adam Brace’s, premature death. By the end of its run, however, it had found its footing, claiming the 2023 Edinburgh Comedy Award. Ends has since enjoyed a run at London’s Royal Court Theatre, where it was filmed for release on Netflix, and will tour the UK after a stay at London’s Soho Theatre next month.
To witness Ends in its return to the Fringe (for 12 shows only) is to bask in Shah’s brilliance. He speaks at breakneck speed in his part-comedy show part-lecture. The quickness of his tongue (both in words spoken and wit conveyed) sometimes make him difficult to follow, but his sense of urgency and depth of love for his family is indisputable. In this remarkable tribute to his grandfather’s sacrifice and dedication, Shah recounts his grandparents’ arranged marriage, the instruction that led his grandfather to immigrate (alone) to England, the five-year wait his grandmother and their three children endured without him in India, and the family's reunion at Heathrow Airport. Interspersed throughout is Shah’s commentary on the state of British politics, what makes former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak a “perfect” Indian boy, and the lessons the comedian learned in his first year of marriage.
In reflecting on the prominence of East Asians in British politics, Shah sums it up by saying, “Politically, I’m furious. Racially, I’m thrilled.”
Over the course of Shah’s hour, the laughs become more sparse, but Ends loses none of its heart. Shah recounts when one of his classmates branded him as safe despite the color of his skin with a cheeky “get a load of this guy” attitude. Minutes later, he describes the half-decade of tears shed by his grandmother, who had nothing more than a photograph and handful of letters by which to remember her husband.
Shah’s set begins by teasing a younger audience member, defining general practitioners, hospitals, and newspapers with the implication they are people and institutions of a bygone era. While these are nods to a changing landscape some may find rather bleak, Shah retains hope for the future—of British people, of East Asians, of “Best Dressed” guidelines. His hope is born from the last 20 years of progress he has witnessed since his grandfather’s premature death. In many ways, Shah lives in an England his grandfather wouldn’t recognize, both in 2002 when he left this world and in 1964 when he arrived in a new one.
As someone closer to Shah’s age than that audience member, I can empathize with the struggle to imagine a better world for future generations. And I struggle to find my place in how I can create that for them. Listening to Shah, shedding tears as he swallows his, it seems possible. He’s presented evidence that while London still endures violent race riots (including very recently), London also celebrates the accomplishment of some phenomenal political firsts, which lead to seconds, which lead to thirds, which lead to true progress. The kind of progress his grandfather lived and worked for, but died before he could see. And isn’t that how you define hope? By what Ends are on the horizon and what beginnings you might still perceive.
Ahir Shah: Ends performs at Pleasance Courtyard until August 23. Tickets available here.
