Australian stand-up Matt Okine made his UK debut at the Edinburgh Fringe last month and earned himself a best newcomer nomination in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, to add to his best newcomer award at 2012's Melbourne Comedy Festival (jointly won with Ronny Chieng). He's certainly an assured performer, even if his observational humour relies too heavily on the everyday in Being Black & Chicken & S#%t.
Chicken – whether the companies Okine keeps in business to feed his habit or a controversial television advertisement back home in Australia – features prominently in the first 10 minutes, which is followed by a digression on the ethics of eating whalemeat and squid. He tells us he likes a drink - "I don't drink heaps, but I drink enough to be embarrassed on bin day." It's all warm and chatty - too chatty perhaps, as Okine's stories take a long time to tell and are often not ended by a decent punchline, which means that the show takes a while to get into its stride.
But then, when the comic mentions his ethnic background - Scottish, German and Ghanaian - there's a palpable feeling in the room of “now we're getting down to business”.
It's an electric moment, but Okine moves on swiftly
Okine attended a family reunion last year in Ghana, where his cousins perceive him as rich and he felt out of place. He talks about a visit to the notorious Elmina Castle, the centre of Ghana's slave trade when it was the Gold Coast, and draws a line between chicken being the only meat that his Ghanaian forebears, as slaves in America, ate and that TV ad (involving a bucket of fried chicken and a black man, since withdrawn). It's an electric moment, but Okine moves on swiftly to talk about the time settings on toasters, or airline safety, and the moment is lost.
The Australian has a gift of a subject in his mixed heritage but he shies away from confronting both his and his audience's prejudices, preferring instead to make light of them. A more experienced or confident comic would surely examine this subject more deeply, or make cleverer jokes about it, at least – particularly his German grandfather, an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth. This is, however, a confident debut by a talented young comic who promises much more in the future.
- Matt Okine is at Soho Theatre until 7 September
Add comment