We Have Not Been Prateek Kohli Review

Three performers who are quite clearly experts in their field.

Tucked upstairs at The PACK I entered The Den ready for a late afternoon of stand-up comedy with Prateek Kohli but was met instead with the mild hubbub of confusion and the three familiar faces of Dave Pitt, Emma Purshouse and Steve Pottinger. Expecting a show about the everyday absurdities of India and Britain, what I came to know is that life’s absurdities are never far away, and a simple calendar error meant that Prateek was far from the stage in Wolverhampton, putting the final touches to his show ready for the next day! What this had left was a gaping hole in the series of events planned for the Fringe Festival and a room of keen literary folk baying for a performance. What were the hosts to do? Pandemonium is in their title, but pandemonium at this late stage on a Saturday afternoon was not what they were planning. 

There was only one solution, since retreating to the bar downstairs, filling their glasses with the amber nectar and pretending it wasn’t happening was not an option. The Show Must Go On (as a wise old Queen once sang) and so ever the quick thinking, intelligent performers that the revered three are, Pass The Poetry Parcel was born (or maybe resurrected as I heard on the grapevine that something similar had happened once before). 

A simple premise; 40 minutes on the timer, 3 performers who were to listen to the poem that comes before and base their own poem on that. What followed could have been 40 minutes of pure, fumbling, nonsense but what the audience got was 40 minutes of pure, exceptional poetry joy.

The intimate nature of the room matched perfectly the intimate nature of the performances as the poets were laid quite bare and extremely vulnerable in the impromptu nature of the show. What a real treat for an audience not to see a perfectly polished repertoire, but to see poems brought to life, often dragged from the far reaches of the poet’s memory and with evident joy as the realisation that it matched something from the poem before and they would get to share. 

From Dave, we were treated to musing on the impending doom brought about by AI and the Internet, regaled with the tale of the men who brought the Slasher back (look it up!), brought back to the harsh reality and deep-felt anger at the deaths of the 97 Hillsborough fans (my favourite line from the whole evening was probably the description of “Maggie with her handbag of hatred”), and then reduced to fits of giggles as we met a talking dildo. 

Emma started with a hilarious kids poems, that made the audience laugh out loud with her local dialect and obvious flare for comedic timing, wowed us with her observations of local characters, car crashes in Wales and obvious deep seated trauma at the loss of a football competition at school just because she was a girl (she claims to be over it, but I’m not so sure!). She finished the show, timed to perfection with the shared advice not to buy a chocolate labrador, because unfortunately, they melt.  

Steve took us on a fast paced, whistle stop tour of the music industry and some of the fast paced characters we might meet there, charmed us with his love story set to the backdrop of Enya, attempted to impress us with his knowledge of Latin, but made up for it in his witty, satirical portrayal of politics and irreverent, sweary nods to the characters contained within as he offered his alternative to a resignation speech. He completed his offerings with nostalgic glimpses into the past and wonderings on the passing of time as he freely admitted to being that old man who remembers when this was all fields. 

The audience had been expecting comedy, but what we got was far more than that. We had comedy, we had anger, we had nostalgia, we had politics and philosophy, social commentary and love. We had history and football, Latin and Welsh. Considering the fact that 10 minutes before the show, the show did not exist, I have nothing but deep respect, admiration and I’ll admit a tinge of jealousy for these three performers who are quite clearly experts in their field. As I left, I felt like I had been exposed to a rare kind of treat - poets in their natural habitat, doing what poets love and obviously enjoying every second. This enjoyment was so easily transferred to the audience who, despite the mix up, did not miss out on a great afternoon and in fact got to experience something quite precious.