Phil Wang: Mellow Yellow

Apparently, Phil Wang has taken some flack from his fellow comedians over the name of his show. Rather than highlighting his Chinese-British heritage, many of his peers would be much more comfortable if he simply turned his name into a stupid pun, like everyone else. However, while the cultural mix that informs his family and character provides much of Wang's best material, audiences should not assume that this will result in an hour of confrontational, racially-charged humour. As the title suggests, Wang is a pretty mellow guy.

Perhaps a little too mellow. Though Wang, winner of the 2010 Chortle Student Comedian of the Year award, is a skilled observational comedian, he has difficulty maintaining momentum in his set, either pausing excessively or trying to fill up the silence with small talk that only serves to delay the real gags. When they arrive, the result is mixed: as mentioned before, Wang is at his best when skewering assumptions about his heritage—"Oh no," he sarcastically imagines the audience thinking, "not another Chinese-British comedian!"—but cannot maintain that quality. A digression on a family dinner is largely excellent, but jokes about the history of chopsticks fall flat.

Wang seems even less assured once he gets onto subjects such as superheroes and gritty reboots, a vein of geekish humour that has been done many times, and done better, long before Wang's middling attempts. Still, if he can focus both his technique and his subject matter, Wang may yet be worth watching.