Omid Djalili - Behind Enemy Lines, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
A belly-dance to the music of terror
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Your support makes all the difference.Comics sharing their thoughts on last year's terrorist attacks are two a penny at the Fringe, but you'll find none more intelligent, open-hearted or downright funny than the Anglo-Iranian stand-up Omid Djalili.
Behind Enemy Lines has the stand-up deliberating over the post-11 September media coverage, the bombing of Afghanistan and the cultural stereotyping that comes with being an Iranian living in the UK. "Keep the laughter coming; it helps with the asylum application," he cries as he shimmies, shuffles and belly-dances his way on to the stage.
You may have seen Djalili before, if not on the television presenting Bloody Foreigners, an award-winning documentary about the plight of asylum-seekers, then perhaps in a handful of Hollywood blockbusters – The Mummy, Spy Games, Gladiator – in "the little Arab parts".
He talks of the paranoia he experienced following the collapse of the twin towers – "A bloke would come up to me and ask for the time. I'd go, 'What do I look like? A bloody terrorist?'" – and how people on the street began to regard him with suspicion. A game called Ethnic Catchphrase satirises the way the Muslim world is portrayed on television. There are plenty of merry jokes at the expense of Americans and Germans, too, each one teetering on the brink of bad taste.
Wrong-footing the audience is a favourite Djalili technique. For the first 10 minutes of the show he speaks with a strong Iranian accent. When he reveals his English middle-class tones the audience shriek with a mixture of horror and hilarity. "It's an ethnic ruse," he cries. "It gets a few laughs, people love me, so why not?"
Yet Djalili doesn't preach or patronise. Rather, he offers an alternative viewpoint, one which disrupts the received wisdom about the Middle East and what has absurdly become known as the war against terror. At times he likes to lighten things up a little; his repertoire of impressions, which range from Brian Blessed to S Club 7, is worth the price of the ticket alone. From time to time he indulges in further bouts of belly-dancing, each more ridiculous and raunchy than the last.
As the show goes on, the imagery becomes increasingly extreme. In one particularly graphic instance Djalili imagines Tony Blair's Scots blood boiling over when faced with the threat of a Muslim bombing of Number 10. Trust me, it will take a few days for that particular mental picture to fade away.
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