one4review | On 01, Aug 2025

There’s something bubbling at the Pleasance this year. A sense that you’re watching a comic not just arriving, but arriving fully formed. KC Shornima—29, currently writing for SNL, and making her Fringe debut—is not just doing stand-up. She’s doing it entirely on her own terms.

Ironically, she’s in the very same room where Seth Meyers once stood handing out sodden flyers in the rain, trying to convince strangers to take a punt. KC won’t have to bother. Her show will sell out through word of mouth alone.

Born in Nepal, raised in the US, and now living in New York, Shornima brings with her the sort of calm, observational sharpness that doesn’t so much demand your attention as quietly shift the atmosphere of the room. She isn’t desperate for laughs, and that’s precisely why they come.

Detachment Style is a perfectly titled show – deliberate, and deeply aware. She walks a fine line between aloofness and laser-focused insight, with a stillness on stage that’s oddly captivating. There are no theatrics, no affectation—just a woman with a mic and a hawk-like sense of the crowd, reading the room with the peripheral vision of an owl.

The show drifts between themes—therapy, Tinder, boyfriends and navigating the cultural choreography of being an Asian woman in Western spaces. It’s observational comedy filtered through millennial disillusionment and low-grade existential dread. The tone is quietly devastating one moment, undercut by a perfectly timed side-eye or withering punchline the next. There are topics here that another Fringe great—Bill Hicks—would’ve been proud to tackle. It feels like the baton is being passed on.

Among the standout moments are a hilariously accurate riff on “male comedy bros,” a wince-inducing tale about why you should never bring siblings to prestigious work events, and a deftly told bit about her struggle to understand Scottish men, delivered with the rhythm of someone who’s been trying for a while—and failing gloriously.

She also touches, almost incidentally, on being abandoned as a baby during Nepal’s civil war. A topic that could easily turn heavy, but which she handles with remarkable grace and detachment—letting the humour bleed through without ever trivialising the experience. There’s also a brief but brutal takedown of Trump’s visit to Scotland, thrown in with a perfectly placed shrug.

It’s rare to see someone this young command a room with such minimal effort. There’s no rush, no flailing, no desperate segues—just clear, well-observed writing performed with icy confidence.

It’s worth saying: great writers don’t always make great stand-ups. But KC Shornima proves she’s got the chops to hang with the big guns. Her voice feels original, necessary—and the kind you’ll be hearing a lot more from very soon.

Go see a new voice in complete control of her craft. Mums and dads: take your angsty, alienated daughters—they’ll laugh, feel seen, and maybe even like you a little more for it.

****
Reviewed by Steve H
Pleasance Courtyard – Bunker One
18.10 (1hr)
Until 24 Aug (not 12)