Leila Nawabi - Relay
Stand-up at Soho Theatre (12th March 2026)
Intro
I was back at Soho Theatre once again, seeing Leila Nawabi. I previously saw her during my last trip to Fringe in 2023. Late on a Sunday night, squeezed into a packed room on the top floor of Pleasance, I didn’t have many expectations beyond it being a name that had come up on my radar and the scheduling suited me. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw - she was young, and clearly still figuring the world out, but making strides into her career as a comic. The show centred around the controversy and fall-out from a comment she made about Rishi Sunak on Welsh radio as a 21 year old brown Welsh comic. She said the Chancellor did “not represent most brown people, unless most people have a billion pounds” and then called him Prince Charles in brownface. This of course triggered a backlash from the anti-snowflake mob. Typical hypocrisy! But fuel for a Fringe show. I left there outraged on her behalf, but certainly entertained. The fact that that show was reviewed 3 stars but I loved it further fuels my reluctance to value subjective opinions
Relay
This show was called Relay, and was her 2025 Fringe show. Unfortunately there was nothing else on the bill that night to warrant a double whammy, but I was willing to travel in for the single event. The first thing that struck me was how under-sold it was. Just 38 in the room. She’s there for 3 nights, and has an insta following of nearly 6000. I expected more.
Audience Size
I’ve always felt that the audience size at Fringe and for the same show on tour is directly related to marketing/hype and unfairly not reflective of quality. Most notably for me, I saw Jon Harvey do treasuRETROve (love the wordplay in the title) at the Vault Festival on a Sunday night once to a near empty room. I was there because I’d seen him headline Festival of the Spoken Nerd’s An Evening of Unnecessary Detail’s big special show at Bloomsbury Theatre. I was not quite aware of what the show entailed. It was billed as an ode to 80s VHS films and b-movies. I was not prepared for the journey he took us on. It turns out Jon is man dressed up as Lord Buckethead, a character he discovered in ones of those forgotten films. He appropriated the character as a joke candidate against Theresa May, bringing the most adored and comical challenger since the heyday of the Monster Raving Loony Party. (I just learned whilst writing this that the UK distributor of the original film stood against Thatcher in Finchley in 87 and 92, although I don’t remember him having much impact at the time.) He then detailed the dispute with the copyright owner which led to him creating a similar but original character Count Binface for several elections since. (side note: bin in Arabic names means ‘son of’ and I always chuckle to myself that he’s Count bin Face AKA Count, son of Face. In a similar way, whenever I see Watford Bypass on my maps, I read it as Watford-by-pass.) The show was a journey starting off innocuously as a love letter to a childhood hobby before developing into one of the greatest political tales of the modern era. And the room was painfully empty. An exceptionally brilliant show but not the audience it warranted. I felt the same here - the upstairs room can hold about 90 people and deserved to be packed. Onto the show itself…..
Re-Relay
She opened with a keytar song.
The show was punctuated with a few songs, mainly with keytar. They were funny enough, and a nice unique approach.
4 wooden figures stood at the back of the room, turned around. Over the course of the story, they were revealed to us. Firstly her partner, a fellow comic. I won’t spoil the narrative and reveal the central element, but the story followed a journey they embarked upon. All I can say is I’m glad I hadn’t googled her to see what she’s been up to lately, or to convince my companion, because what she’s been doing since I last saw her would’ve revealed the show’s entire story, and the key twist. She narrated the story well, with few jokes but a funny slant throughout. I was once again looking for the emotional hook at 42 minutes, but the story didn’t unfold in that way. This one bucked the trend, with the twist coming towards the end. It was unexpected but welcome and tied the story together beautifully.
This night, I was sober. The bar downstairs was empty after, which was disappointing from the perspective of less heave would’ve been more comfortable than last time when I remained in the bar for ages and it was standing room only. It was uncharacteristically quiet for that hour, but I guess whatever shows were on that night and the timings meant that fewer stayed for a debrief and a nightcap. My companion had a train to catch so I too left immediately, which meant my door-to-door time was a mere 3 hours.
On the way home, I reacquainted myself with her partner (Priya Hall)’s material. I was most familiar with her radio show and TV pilot Beena and Amrit but her insta was also full of clips of her latest show which presented the same story from a different perspective.
Without much further to say about the show, this is a brief journal. But if you’re into female/queer/POC comedy stylings, or even not, she’s definitely one to check out when you next see her name flash up on the bill.