Comedy review: Bilal Zafar: Imposter, The Stand, Glasgow - 'a dryly impish sense of humour'

Bilal Zafar has a dryly impish sense of humour, evidenced by the playful follies he undertakes on his cult online Twitch channel and the robustly mischievous and ingenious ways he’s confronted hate and bigots in his previous shows. But in Imposter, the joke is very much on him. He spends the greater part of this single narrative conveying his bemusement and incredulity at what happened, the bizarreness of his tale casting him as a bewildered witness more than a victim.

Just before his wedding, the comic was living in London when a new occupant moved into his houseshare – a middle-aged man named Jack. Fond of a drink and seemingly prone to tall tales and hyperbole, he even has his own catchphrase. Zafar and his housemate initially treated him as a harmless annoyance. But as his behaviour grew more and more erratic and his hostility towards the comic escalated, the police arrived on the scene. Unfortunately, somewhere between the limits of modern law enforcement and Zafar’s retelling – he insists that everything he’s disclosing is true – they proved oddly ineffectual, until Jack went too far.

A less focused, more analytical take on these events might reflect upon the limits of public services to manage someone with obvious mental health and likely addiction issues. But Zafar strives to keep his story light, emphasising Jack’s weirdness rather than his darkness, even if this perhaps robs Imposter of some dramatic tension. Nevertheless, it is a confounding but contained little episode, with a second antagonist arriving halfway through to further muddy the waters of reality and fantasy. And Zafar stretches the confusion just a little bit more with an ending that strains credibility but also undermines any semi-satisfying conclusions that may have been drawn.

Most importantly, Imposter is consistently funny, with Zafar’s often deadpan nonchalance in sharing the twists and turns amplifying the laughs from his apparent talent to rub people up the wrong way.