Not a lot of hahas in Shayor’s Hahakar

As a fairly newcomer to Naveed's Comedy Club (NCC), I wasn't sure what to expect, but sitting stone-faced for the show's first ten minutes was not on my bingo card for a Thursday night.

The comedy special featured Sharar Shayor as the host following four comedians: Tashdid Ashrar, Mahedi Toruu, Sami Doha and Akhlaq Siddiqi.
 
Thankfully, it wasn't all bad; "Sharar Shayor's Hahakar" picked up once Mahedi Toruu took the stage. He was absolutely hilarious throughout his set. While sexual humour often feels like the laziest way to get laughs, Toruu's sharp delivery and impeccable timing set him apart. Despite leaning heavily into sexual jokes, he managed to keep them tasteful (well, most of the time).
 
Comedy is tricky, I get that. You need the right crowd, sharp comic timing, and, most importantly, good material. Shayor has all the right ingredients, but his overreliance on recycled jokes, already circulating on social media, is where he fell short. They lose their punch after you hear them the first couple of times. Fortunately for him, the crowd seemed fresh, cheering on his familiar bits as if they were new.
 

Sharar Shayor has all the right ingredients, but his overreliance on recycled jokes, already circulating on social media, is where he fell short.

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When Sami Doha hit the stage, it was more like watching a slow-motion train wreck than a comedy act. People were abandoning their seats like they'd just remembered they left the stove on at home. Soon, I got the picture. The highlight of his performance didn't come from him but from two teens behind me muttering, "Sami bhai's trying way too hard, isn't it?"

His set mainly involved a bizarre attempt to explain why people who leave early should sit in the back, followed by frequent "Wait, what was I saying?" pauses that even the audience couldn't rescue.

His attempts to roast or flatter familiar faces were about as clear as his new "outlook," which, like his jokes, didn't quite stick. As he kept fumbling with punchlines, the steady stream of people exiting with a "Goodbye, please don't come back" vibe sealed the deal. Poor Sami.
 
What did work was Shayor and the headliner, Akhlaq Siddiqi, piggybacking off Sami Doha's poor performance to squeeze in a few gags. Still, the headliner's overall performance fell a little off. Akhlaq reflecting on his new experience as a theatre actor with the "how alligators have sex" and making religion "cool" jokes took so long to get to the punchlines that I forgot what he was talking about. His saving grace was the crowd work he pulled off at the end of his set. After Sami Doha's flop, I sat through another snooze fest.

Tashdid Ashrar, who opened the night, delivered a decent set with a few solid jokes about his friend 'Farabi' being random and unpredictable and his mother being somewhere in between modern and orthodox. 

Interestingly, the best material from all the comedians (except Sami Doha) came in the form of cleverly crafted political jokes about Sheikh Hasina fleeing the country. These were slipped in subtly and were by far the crowd's favourite, drawing the biggest laughs of the night.
 
Shayor popped in between every set, and his standout moments were his dark humour about "Hujurs," which he executed brilliantly, and his sharp takes on the "LGBTQ BRAC" situation. He knew how to walk the line just right, turning potentially sensitive topics into some of the evening's best laughs.

 
"Sharar Shayor's Hahakar" at NCC on 17 October was Shayor's third comedy special, and it would be interesting to see him develop more jokes about current events, as he thrives in that realm. The lineup was decent overall, with Toruu leaving the stage wearing an imaginary comedy crown while the others likely went home reflecting on their subpar material.