Hari Sriskantha: Like Breath On A Mirror

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Shorter free shows are an opportunity to see an impression of a full hour's show still to come. At 40 minutes they don't suffer from the lull an audience can feel midway through an hour, and it's a chance for promising comics to put together a short first effort without qualifying to come under the scrutiny of the judges of the big Edinburgh awards. Hari Sriskantha is just such a promising act, having garnered a suitable profile doing well at a couple of prestigious comedy competitions in recent years. Sriskantha's anxious, nervy persona is well suited to his topic for discussion: how to achieve immortality. A topic which he addresses with the thoroughness and eye to detail of a carefully constructed science experiment.

There are several methods of never dying the he has found in his search. He starts with the obvious one, "staying alive"—apparently not that simple—and progresses through to less literal ways to stick such as by leaving a legacy. There are tangents aplenty, not least the undercurrent of racial gags drawing on Sriskantha's own life experience as a Sri Lankan British man. There's a zest for life in his amusingly pedantic material, although the passion for his subject does at times overtake the effectiveness of less impactful punchlines.

Sriskantha is likeable and quirky. The show itself, like the breath on the mirror mentioned in the title, leaves less of an impression but is fun and engaging, tickling interest at what a full hour with full concentration from Sriskantha might actually produce.