Akmal’s presence at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is well renowned. The comedian’s decades of experience and natural ability to radiate charisma strengthens his near 30 year long marriage to the festival. Akmal was clearly born to entertain. The comedian could effortlessly entertain simply by reading out the alphabet.

Akmal’s greatest strength lies in his audience work. An impressive moment from his performance were his improvised reactions to the behaviour of the audience. One moment that stands out to me is when Akmal was joking about Catholic pedophiles, an audience member from the front row stood up and made his way towards the exit. Akmal connected the dots instantly, and joked that this audience member was a Catholic pedophile who felt the joke so personally that he had to exit. The entire audience was in stitches. Regardless of whether or not you think this joke is funny, Akmal’s witty ability to associate these ideas is undeniably impressive. This element of Akmal’s performances is where he strikes gold.

These out-of-left-field jokes, accompanied by his impulsive tangents, brought exuberant character to the show. These unscripted moments of authenticity demonstrated why Australia fell in love with Akmal in the first place. Akmal reaps the fruits of his impulsive, at times reckless behaviour when interacting with his audience. Throughout the night, a select few audience members became Akmal’s side characters. The comedian used the front row to create storylines, and inside jokes he could refer back to throughout the show. Akmal builds a little universe for every one of his performances, filled with characters unique to each and every show.

Nonetheless, these moments were unscripted, and unfortunately only made up a small portion of the show. Most of the scripted jokes fell flat for me. Akmal focused on scams for the majority of the hour. From crystals, to children, to gambling, Akmal joked about the everyday habits in the ordinary person’s life that he believed were scams. Although this is my subjective truth, I felt that the vast majority of these jokes felt stale. Jokes about crystals not being authentic, and others about the bleakness of cigarette packaging have already been told. Awaiting this show, I was nervous. I compulsively thought, What could Akmal and I possibly have in common?. Clearly, Akmal wrote this show with the same sentiment in mind. It felt as if Akmal’s management told him to try and appeal to the masses.

The most disappointing aspect was that these jokes didn’t feel authentic to Akmal. Sure, they were all relatable, but they weren’t groundbreaking. I understand the compulsion to crack jokes that everyone in your audience can understand, but that doesn’t have to mean neglecting your personality to get a few pity laughs. Don’t get me wrong, I laugh at Pauline Hanson everytime I see her spewing absolute nonsense, but I don’t need Akmal regurgitating her lines for a couple of laughs. I want an act only Akmal could provide from his unique lens of life experience.

Moreover, Akmal attempted to make some dark humour jokes. Now, I am not against dark humour jokes. These slightly offensive jokes can be some of the funniest you hear. However, for dark humour to be acceptable, it actually has to be funny. I’m no comedian, so I couldn’t tell you how Akmal could’ve changed his dark humour jokes to make them funny. But I do know that if you’re going to joke about a conflict zone characterised by its genocide, you cannot let it fall short. Joking that peace in the Middle East could be reached if the leaders bonded over which of them were circumcised is just not funny. There is no cleverness to that joke. It wasn’t as if I was the only person in the audience not laughing. Even Akmal mentioned throughout the show that this was a tough crowd. Whether the crowd was truly tough, or the tension stemmed from Akmal’s performance, can be left for debate.

To close the show, Akmal reserved around 15 minutes for the audience to ask questions. Unfortunately, this crowd simply wasn’t the most engaging. Stand-up comes with the constant challenge that every crowd will be different from the next. The audience that I was a part of, didn’t have many questions, statements, or character. Although this definitely wasn’t in Akmal’s control, it had an immense impact on how his show closed. Whenever the silence became too loud, or a bit he tried in response to an audience member’s comment had fizzled out, Akmal would resort to his strengths. This came in the form of retelling jokes from previous shows, and storytelling anecdotes similar to the spontaneous gags I praised earlier.

This skill to quickly adapt to the challenges that come with performing live shows has clearly been honed through Akmal’s experience as a veteran comedian. However, once his rescue blanket was no longer providing him warmth, Akmal returned to ask the audience a question. He got lost in this cycle a few times before he closed his show. It felt painful every time he tried to ring out anything engaging from the audience. I would’ve appreciated it if Akmal had just abandoned the concept after 2 or 3 attempts, and had simply stuck to starting a joke himself, and then encouraged the audience to engage with him.

Despite all of this, Akmal’s undeniable talent makes him a natural comic. He has been a staple in the Australian comedy scene for decades because of his hard work, and amusingly outlandish charisma. Hopefully we see more of Akmal in his upcoming shows. Humour is great when it is relatable, but it is even better when authentic.