Biting wit: From match fixing to Fb revolutions to ‘frandships’, Saad laughs up a riot

Over 100 people attended the standup comedy.

ISLAMABAD: While some were consumed by Pakistan’s harrowing defeat to England, others took a healthy dose of laughter therapy at Kuch Khaas here on Saturday. Pakistani comedian/actor/writer Saad Haroon unleashed his recipe of improvisational stand-up comedy tinged with live singing and spontaneous pick-up lines on the audience.

A crowd of over 100 comprising many expats filled up the space, warming up to Haroon’s hilarity in spurts of pacing around, pulling foreign accents and breaking into dance.

He effortlessly transformed into various roles, nuancing each joke with troubles and idiosyncrasies of not just the country but also the world at large.

The ice-breaker served as mock parody of unrelated subjects steadily progressing into humorous anecdotes. Swiftly narrating personal accounts of being robbed at gunpoint in Karachi to going through security checks at airports to ridiculing status quo, Haroon’s jokes packed a punch.

From global crises like economic recession to Syrians wanting freedom on Facebook (Fb) to Egyptians wanting democracy on Facebook, he prodded on how all we Pakistanis ever wanted was “fraaandship”. Add to that how we can’t fix sugar or wheat shortage but we can always fix matches. In a perverse twist, he brushed upon Shoaib Malik’s wedding with Sania Mirza, soliciting roars of laughter and claps.

He roped in badly-scripted Bollywood films to terrorist (“bootless”) camps and lifestyles to deceptively posted Facebook display pictures of otherwise ugly people, politicians, dictators and complicated weddings rituals around the world.

With appropriate comic timing, he manoeuvred the show, pulling antics to go with his own version of Lionel Richie’s song Hello, “Salam”, of a desi boy wanting to marry a girl with an American passport. He also sang what he dubbed “Pure Pakistani blues” with Salman Zaidi of Saturn band on the guitar.

He jabbed at Pakistanis’ obsessive and en masse use of Fair & Lovely as cheap sun block, with Pakistani Army being the prime suspect. “Fair & Lovely is a lie! You know why? It might make you fair but it certainly can’t make you lovely,” he joked.

Oddly irreverent and good-natured in the same vein, Saad Haroon kept the show interactive and lively all the way through, sneaking up at the audience when they least expected him to.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 20^th, 2012.