It’s 25 years since New Labour told us: “We’re all middle class now” and it’s not a claim that’s weathered well. Class is squarely back on the agenda these days: Athena Kugblenu’s new standup show on the subject follows ones by Kai Samra, Jason Manford and Sophie Willan among many others – and builds on her own, similarly themed Radio 4 broadcast. Kugblenu delves here into her own conflicted class identity, the child of an aspirational Indian-Caribbean mum and an overqualified Ghanaian dad who struggled to find even menial work in the UK. Does that make her working class? She’s not so sure.
What you can be sure of, in any standup show on this theme, are relatable observational gags about – well, it’s usually quinoa and smashed avocados, but here we get Nigella recipes, granite worktops and the babyccino. Familiar class signifiers all, but Kugblenu’s show gets stronger when the references get less familiar and more specific to her own life, growing up in East Finchley, poring over the itemised phone bill for potential savings – but blissfully ignorant that there was anything lower than middle class about her happy, confident life.
Her reflections are the richer for intersecting with race, as the 40-year-old marvels at the low academic demands she discovered, while working for Ofsted, that some white working-class parents made on their kids. (Cue amusing comparison with her own, second-generation immigrant experience.) Latterly, the show focuses on Kugblenu the new mum, concerned – as Chris Rock was last week – to ensure her kids aren’t spoiled by the privilege she has grafted to secure for them.
The conclusion to which all this leads, using her parents’ migrant experience to flip conventional class thinking on its head, is striking. But not all of the earlier thinking is as pointed. When Kugblenu asserts that “Class isn’t about what you have, it’s about who you are,” she gets at something interesting about the complexities of these categorisations. But the thought is undeveloped. We’re left with a show that ruminates engagingly and with intermittent insight on class, and addresses with likable honesty Kugblenu’s confused relationship with it.
Athena Kugblenu: Shaking Her Class is at Soho theatre, London, until 21 May
