You get a particular type of laughter, undergirded by gasps of joy and recognition, when a crowd hears its own lives joked about on stage as seldom joked about before. Part of the pleasure of watching this podcast turned show is the palpable gratitude and glee with which it’s received, by a (mainly girl, mainly brown) audience drinking up its gags about British-Asian life, about dating and “aunties”, about smelling like curry and Bend It Like Beckham. There’s sex too, and plenty of it, as Rubina Pabani and Poppy Jay recreate on stage the candid carnal chatter of their hit BBC Sounds show.
Add a song here, a dance there and a few sketches, and Mama Told Me Not to Come adds up to a likable confection, albeit one that saves its hardest hits for its final moments. Before then, on a DayGlo, teenage girl’s bedroom set, everything is upbeat. Pabani and Jay re-enact their first (self-administered) orgasms, the former on a space hopper. They conjure up a “Coconut Crimes Hotline” to report the flouting of racial boundaries. They chat excitedly about their youth, and how they came to terms – given precious little external help – with their sexuality and cultural identity.
