Kwame Asante @ Pleasance Courtyard
A gentle bedside manner from Kwame Asante
It’s good to have a doctor on site in August. Kwame Asante is a welcome and gentle presence in this boiling commerce-driven chuckle pit, and as a registered health professional Asante’s bedside manner is just what you need after hours of bumping shoulders and pints with the comedy hoi-polloi outside in the courtyard.
Teenage Heartblob is a low key treatise on childhood obesity, immigrant family life and the ups and downs of working for the NHS. Kwame is confident, engaging and delightfully endearing as he describes growing up in the 90s in a situation resembling a sitcom-that-never-was. The title refers to his own weight issues as a child, and he muses and reflects on these through the lens of a now-qualified doctor. Asante is quick to point out that the show should never be considered a lecture, and there are times where the his tales take perhaps too long to get to the funny, which leaves a show that’s packed with arresting content without necessary being heavy with laughs – you may have to hold on just a touch longer for that punchline.
Kwame Asante: Teenage Heartblob, Pleasance Courtyard (The Cellar), until 25 Aug (not 15), 9.45pm, £6-10
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