As the bright evening sun glistened across the stage, the four of us sat on our stools, mixed drinks in hand and wondered why we had never seen comedy in this place before. Where were we you ask, Honolulu? Havana? Hermosillo?… Nope, we were in frickin’ Hornchurch!

We had been invited to a gig at the Queens Theatre, a nice modern space with the curious quirk that its ‘The Other Stage’ space is surrounded by floor to ceiling windows. Stylish indeed, but I think that Hallam & Brooks (the architects) may have forgotten about the existence of seasonality, because as the sun sets directly behind that glass-walled stage it essentially blinds the audience. Meaning that for the first half of the support act, one section of the crowd looked like they were gazing out to sea!

Speaking of the support, we must give a quick shout out to Preet Singh who came out as our opening clown and definitely got the evening rolling. It’s difficult to say too much about his regular act, as he focused on crowd work for his twenty minutes, but he easily pulled in enough laughs for us to know that we would happily give his solo show a crack.

Now, I would never normally mention the interval (I’m generally anti-interval, if I’m honest) but after recharging our glasses one of our clan noticed that Eshaan’s dad and brother were working the merch stand at the back of the room! A charming novelty that ended up with my mate saying hello and picking up a rather excellent “Onlyshaans” football shirt – gotta love good merch.

Back to the show, and it was time for our clown for the evening to take to the stage. Expectations were high: we have seen Eshaan perform twice before and on both occasions he absolutely killed it. Any concerns though, were blown away within the first few gags. This was another stellar performance from a clown who is only getting better and better.

The key topic of this show covers how Eshaan has been bought up in England, essentially as English but with a massive respect for and love of his Asian heritage. And yet certain people and groups still can’t seem to get their heads round it – starting at his school and continuing, sadly, to present day.

Whilst there is truly hilarious material within this set the one thing that I feel he has improved upon since we last saw him is his ability to take the subject to a more heartfelt place and swing the emotion in the room. It truly is a skill and one that, in my humble opinion, all the best clowns seem to have. Couple this with his intelligent yet almost innocent delivery and you really have something worth the price of admission.

To catch Eshaan’s 2025 Tour visit eshaanakbar.com/2025-tour where new dates are still being added.

Clown Stars: * * * * *

@Queens Theatre, Hornchurch

If you liked this you might also enjoy…