Aziz Ansari, Hammersmith Apollo, review: Comic tackles outrage culture and his sexual misconduct scandal in smart stand-up show

Aziz Ansari was once approached by a “fan” who mistook him for fellow comedian Hasan Minhaj. When the man realised his mistake, he tried to rectify things by listing everything he knew about Ansari. On Wednesday night, in front of 3,500 people at London’s Hammersmith Apollo, the 36-year-old is animatedly re-enacting the encounter. “Master of None!” “Yeah, that’s me.” “Parks and Recreation!” “Yeah, that’s me.” “Treat yo’self!” “Yeah, that’s me.” “And you had that whole thing last year, the sexual miscond…” “No, no, no, no, no. That was Hasan.”

An hour into his standup show – during which he has covered race, wokeness, Kevin Hart, Alzheimer’s, IUDs and R Kelly – this is the first time Ansari addresses the elephant in the room. An elephant that stampeded into his life on 13 January 2018.

Up until then, the actor and comedian was riding high. Having found fame as the loveably cocky Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation, Ansari created, wrote, and starred in the Netflix comedy series Master of None. The show was quietly radical: a cosy, bingeable dissection of modern dating, race, sexism, and homophobia. There followed an award-winning book, a performance at Madison Square Gardens, and a slot on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Then came the Babe.net article, and everything unravelled.

Alongside the headline, “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turns into the worst night of my life”, the piece claimed that Ansari had gone on a first date with a woman called Grace (a pseudonym), and had repeatedly pressured her into sexual activity with him. “It was 30 minutes of me getting up and moving and him following and sticking his fingers down my throat again,” she said. “It felt like a f**king game.” She recalled leaving Ansari’s flat feeling “violated”, and crying the whole Uber drive home. The article had its detractors – some of whom felt that it had irresponsibly conflated a “bad date” with sexual assault – but it hugely affected Ansari’s cultural currency. After all, he had built a career on being a bastion of feminism, an embodiment of a less toxic kind of masculinity.

Clearly, though, given the size of the audience at the Hammersmith Apollo, Ansari has bounced back. And he is coming for call-out culture. “Everyone,” he says, “is trying to outwoke each other. ‘You thought your eyes were open, this guy doesn’t have a forehead, just so he can see all the injustices.’” He prances across the stage, trilling, “Think-piece, think-piece, I just read a think-piece.” Sceptical about modern society’s propensity for mass, uninformed outrage, Ansari is obviously terrified of his own words being decontextualised and denounced – guests have to place their phones in locked pouches for the entire show.

But with his cartoonish cadence and rascally manner, he seems far less bitter than other comedians who have tried to return after a scandal (see Louis CK). There are a few baggier moments – an anecdote about his girlfriend’s contraceptive options feels overlong – but mostly, he zips through the set with brio and a shrewd charm.

And he has some funny, smart things to say about our passion for indignation – some of which he illustrates in surprising ways. One segment involving a swastika on a pizza is a real performative feat, even if it does require humiliating two audience members. His defence of Kevin Hart over his homophobic past feels like a misstep – “You know who else was sh**tier and more homophobic 10 years ago? Most of us in this room” – but it leads to some acute observations on R Kelly and Michael Jackson, both of whom have recently been retrospectively “cancelled” by allegations of paedophilia years after the claims were first made. Where Ansari considers himself to land on the scale of retribution – from ridiculous to righteous – goes unsaid.

As for whether Ansari, an Indian-American man, is entitled to make so many jokes about the word “niggardly” (which means “meagre” or “stingy”), the jury’s out. Though perhaps someone can write a think-piece about it.