Just The Tonic at The Caves
Aug 20-30
(18:50)
My last comedy review of the Edinburgh Fringe – how fast the fun flies! But what a brilliant way to end this year’s stint, with the uncompromisingly superb ‘Meka Mo’. She comes to Edinburgh with a growing international reputation & a distinctly New York comic sensibility, already sharpen’d across clubs from Gotham Comedy Club & The Stand to Top Secret in London, Tokyo Comedy Bar & the Barcelona Fringe. There’s an immediate confidence to Meka – not the shouty, look-at-me kind, but the much more dangerous variety: the confidence of somebody who knows exactly what she thinks & is perfectly happy to tell you.
“I don’t give a sh!t about Shakespeare,
I’m all about Beyonce.”
Born in & out of the cultural pressure-cooker that is New York City, we get a biopic of sorts – ‘The Young Meka’ – taking us from her super-diverse origins in Astoria, Queens, to the proudly anti-diverse Apallachian ‘monoculture’ environs of college in West Virginia, where the nearest Chinese takeaway was apparently “two towns down.” It’s quite the cultural gear-change, & perfect territory for Meka, whose comedy thrives upon spotting the absurdities that arise when different Americas collide. Race, identity, ambition & belonging are all in there, but never presented like we’re attending a sociology lecture; this is Meka’s life, Meka’s America, & above all Meka’s uberhumorous way of looking at it.
As I watch’d the excellent Meka smash her show out the park, home run after comedy home run, I grew increasingly addicted to her phrases, rhythms & mannerisms. She also penetrated the British psyche like any decent visiting comedian should – people from Leeds were greeted with an enthusiastic “I like y’all!”, while Scottish women were describ’d as generally wanting to punch you in the face. Her outsider’s eye is razor-sharp, picking up those little cultural peculiarities we natives barely notice any more, then firing them straight back at us. “Everyone in Barcelona’s trying to feck!” was another hawk-eye’d comment.
I guess, deep down, Meka is a master anthropologist, a cultural commentator whose chosen medium just happens to be stand-up. Whether she’s examining Britain, America, race, geography or the strange behavioural codes that separate one tribe from another, she’s constantly observing, processing & converting what she finds into comedy. And the great thing is you barely notice the intelligence beneath it all because you’re too busy laughing.
“Everywhere I go I have a blast!” says Meka, & her abundant, joy-loving energy is as infectious as laughter in a lift – once it starts, everybody’s joining in whether they intended to or not. Loud Americans are universally abhorr’d, of course, but Meka somehow flips the page, switches a morpheme: the ‘ab’ becomes a ‘d’, & suddenly she’s ador’d. There’s volume, certainly, but it comes fuell’d by such warmth, exuberance & sheer pleasure in being alive that resistance soon seems pointless.
“In college I learnt a valuable lesson – crack is better than meth – meth leaves you stranded!”
The crowd was full of Americans, actually, & every now & again Meka toss’d them lines I didn’t quite get, but from the explosions of laughter around me I could tell they were landing exactly where intended. As for the Scots, Meka is a piss-taker of the finest vintage, observing us with the delighted curiosity of someone encountering a particularly strange tribe in its natural habitat. I especially enjoy’d her commentary on the White Renaissance, where white rappers are changing to country music.
The show then ends with her internship in New Delhi, a genuine journey of self-discovery which saw her leave the protective shell of her Americanhood & plough headlong into the epic coumtry of contradictions & the ancient cultural banquet that is India. It’s a fitting destination for a show so fascinated by the way people live, speak & see one another; after spending the hour examining everybody else’s culture, Meka suddenly finds her own being examin’d in return as she is follow’d around the streets of India by people who had never seen such an exotic creation. The anthropologist becomes the specimen, the observer becomes the observ’d – & somewhere amid the glorious culture-shock, The Young Meka begins becoming the woman making us laugh today.
Damo
