Tarang Hardikar is a gentle soul, who talks a lot about his inner monologue and growing up in Pune in India, where he was a little boy lost in his own world, who loved to create pillow forts and do mathematics.
In If I’m Not Wrong, which had a debut run at the Edinburgh Fringe last month, Hardikar muses about seemingly disparate things – an encounter with an immigration officer, his inability to draw a straight line and the origin of coconuts among them. He even philosophises a little: “No one would have paid attention to Schrödinger’s cockroach.” He’s not wrong.
So it’s no surprise that there aren’t many belly laughs in If I’m Not Wrong – more laughter of wry recognition, some of it after the fact. But the easygoing comic says, “It’s OK, you can laugh in hindsight” as he jumps from talking about the vagaries of the English language to football trophies or how newspaper headlines should work.
Hardikar is OK with our delayed laughter as he patiently builds his story, acting out several scenarios describing his life with his parents, his teacher, his therapist. At times, the slow build threatens to undercut the comedy, but ultimately it reveals the show’s purpose; we’re getting an insight into the comic’s mind.
There’s a strong section about maths and the reason for the existence of numbers, although, like one or two elements in the hour, it feels under-explored.
This is a high-concept show but Hardikar draws the strands of his story together, as he grapples with self-acceptance and the man that little boy turned into. The personal disclosure at the end explains so much that has gone before, and we see the line that runs through it.
