Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Tarang Hardikar: If I’m Not Wrong
Soho Theatre
Genre: Comedy, Solo Performance, Stand-Up
Venue: Attic at Pleasance Courtyard
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Tarang Hardikar makes his fringe debut with an hour of sharp, clever and absurd observations guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. He has way too many questions, and after the show, these won’t be just his questions.
Review
Tarang cannot draw a straight line. That’s one of the biggest problems of his life. It’s not a skill issue. It’s just that he often gets lost or distracted in the process.
Tarang enters the stage after announcing his entry from backstage. He comes on and says “Woohoo, give it up for the guy who just announced”. He opens to a big laugh. And becomes awkwardly aware that both the guys were him. He gets an even bigger laugh.
In his extremely well constructed, witty and hilarious set, Tarang takes us through what it feels like to be in his mind. Tarang cannot think straight. He’s distracted by the most minute thing and he dives into the universe of that thing. He goes on and on about how no one has ever seen palm trees growing and reveals to us his conspiracy theories about it. He makes many such observations about the world and leaves us with a feeling of “how ridiculous is this guy’s mind?” in the most beautiful way. His observations about the history of mathematics are especially *chef’s kiss*.
Tarang is known to be incredible at observational humour, but I found his style of observational humour to be a little different than the general understanding of it. Often, observational humour looks at something from a distance, separates itself from it, and points out the absurdity in it, which makes it funny. It becomes about how smart the comedian is and how they observed something that other people often miss. Tarang doesn’t do that. His observations are through himself, through his experiences. They are actually his way of reflecting on his experiences. Tarang isn’t positioning himself as someone superior or smarter than the audience. He is genuinely confused about why some things are the way they are. It is honest. And in that honesty, he becomes the clown and we get to laugh at the clown’s perspective. His honest confusion is his biggest strength.
Over the course of an hour, Tarang’s set moves through many different tangents, and you might find yourself in awe of the worlds he creates. Tarang is a masterful craftsman, and he will carefully bring you back to the starting line, which he has already claimed to not know how to draw straight.
But if you look closely at a line, no line is ever straight. Every line goes on its own journey and makes its own curves, tangents and spaces. The perfect straight line is an illusion. And our obsession with that illusion might be the root of our never-ending suffering. We must enjoy the crookedness of a line. And that’s what Tarang is here to remind us.
