“I hope I haven’t offended anyone,” says a coy Akmal Saleh after routines about the Catholic Church and Tony Abbott, “it’s just jokes.”
Perhaps to him that’s all they are, but it’s his willingness and the ease of which he slips into perpetuating stereotypes that is the most disappointing. Be it his impersonation of a taxi driver, the story of an Aboriginal man in Western Australia, the caricature of a “homosexual devil,” or most disturbingly, his quip to two female audience members from Saudi Arabia about not wearing burkas, Akmal constantly searches low for cheap laughs and in the process, a seasoned comedian comes off as amateur.
