Zainab Johnson: Toxically Optimistic review – US comic targets gun culture

Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe slick standup’s fringe debut is full of searching questions about the right to keep and bear arms‘I’ve got a gun.” Nice to be pitched, with that opening line, straight into a show declaring itself different from the others. Zainab Johnson’s maiden fringe set – although she’s already a big noise in the US – gives an account of how she came to own a firearm. It’s not an explicitly political show – if a show about gun ownership by a black, Muslim, American female is allowed to be anything but. But Toxically Optimistic does invite engagement with some searching questions about guns, their use, and the safety they supposedly ensure – even if, so poised is Johnson’s delivery, you barely notice it doing so.Hers is that particularly American style of standup that can feel too polished for UK tastes: smiling, slick and a little bit frictionless. If a British comedian tells a dating story, you can bet they’ll be the butt of the joke; when Johnson does, it’s to lord it over the short guy who wants but can’t have her. Small wonder she is, by her own account, an eternal optimist – even if that quality is now to be tested when a friend tells her, apropos of her buying her own house, that she should acquire a gun without delay. Continue reading...

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