Comedians Sans Borders
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
In this post, we’ll look at two stand-up comedians exploring their cross-cultural identities through comedy. One is Taiwanese-Canadian, having moved to Canada as a teenager and now early in his comedy career. The other is a household name in Switzerland, working to break into the international comedy circuit. Though they’re at very different stages in their careers at home, they’re navigating similar territory abroad.
Both weave personal storytelling with comedy, but take strikingly different approaches- and both are performing in English, their second language.
When I think about their work through an anthropological lens, I focus on how they construct identity. In performance terms, this might be called persona, but that feels too simple for the kind of layered, adaptive work they’re doing. When a performer is operating across languages and cultures, they need a heightened awareness of self, one that communicates clearly both to themselves and to the audience. Truly memorable work comes when that’s mastered.
Also, for what it's worth, my gaydar was totally off with these two. I thought Darren was gay and Michael was straight. Watching their shows, I realized it’s the opposite. Just goes to show how unpredictable cross-cultural coding can be.
Thanks for reading.
(Note: These reviews were originally published as part of my 2025 Edinburgh Fringe coverage for FringeReview. I’m archiving them here for readers who don’t follow that site.)
Darren Leo: Good Engrish
TL;DR
In Good Engrish, Taiwanese-Canadian comedian Darren Leo blends heartfelt storytelling with provocative stand-up to chart his family’s journey from a comfortable life in Taiwan to starting over in Canada. The show moves between vivid scenes of cultural displacement and sharp observations on race, language, and identity. A promising work-in-progress that invites audiences to laugh, think, and connect with the immigrant experience.
Review
Tucked away in the upstairs bar of the four-month-old WU Asia Pacific, with the hum of its restaurant below, up-and-coming Taiwanese-Canadian comic Darren Leo offers his work-in-progress stand-up hour Good Engrish.
The show blends two modes: Leo’s personal storytelling and his stand-up comedy. The story follows how his family went from a comfortable life in Taiwan (what he calls “emergency-row-on-the-plane rich”) to losing everything and moving to Canada when Leo was sixteen. In Taiwan, his mother was a teacher at his school, his seatmate was the president’s daughter, and his grandfather was a soldier. But when his father’s new invention, color-changing mugs, turned out not to be dishwasher safe, the family’s finances collapsed. Within weeks, they had sold everything, including some of his mother’s sentimental heirlooms, and were on a plane to Canada.
Once they arrived, Leo faced the challenges of being a fish out of water: racially different from most of the people around him, not yet fluent in English, and forced to adapt to an entirely new culture. These story segments are where he’s at his most compelling. His pacing and detailed descriptions build empathy and a strong sense of place, giving the audience the feeling of a young man navigating cultural displacement with warmth, honesty, and a knack for character building and vivid scene-setting.
Leo frequently uses act-outs, showing this isn’t just a guy with a mic- he’s also considering the visual story in addition to the auditory, something missed by many stand-ups. There’s room for more precision in those movements; at this stage of the work, they show the piece is moving in the right direction.
The stand-up portions focus on observations about race, language, and culture. They often lean into risky territory: jokes about stereotypes, politics, and identity that he can get away with in part because of his own Asian heritage (Leo punches up and across, never down). The jokes are sharp in their observations and, on the night I was there, landed well with the audience, but they also create a noticeable tonal shift from the tenderness of the storytelling, resulting in two different personas delivering the work.
Deeper integration of those personas would result in a more cohesive piece, adding layers to his stage character that he could play with to create even more humor. At one point, he began to do this: after a round of crowdwork where he took some sharp jabs, he then apologized to the audience members he’d made fun of. In that moment, both personas were truly alive in Leo.
Another angle could be to mine more of the humor already embedded in his family’s journey, including moments of absurdity, resilience, and cultural clash, rather than often steering toward riskier, more provocative jokes. The stand-up doesn’t need to disappear; some of his edgier observations are genuinely insightful. But keeping more of the humor inside the narrative would make for a smoother, more unified arc.
The show has an easy charm, and Leo’s likability means the audience is with him even when the tonal gear shifts are abrupt. He’s only a few years into his stand-up career, and it’s an impressive hour given how new he is to the scene- so much so that I had the sense this is someone really going somewhere. If he can integrate the two sides of his stage persona and shape a bigger payoff for the ending, Good Engrish could grow into something truly memorable.
With as many labels as FringeReview offers, it’s still hard to choose the perfect one. While much of this show is working, there are areas that could develop further. So, in the spirit of his Taiwanese schoolteacher mom, I’ll give him a push: I recommend Good Engrish for the boldness of its attempt to weave together rich storytelling with risky stand-up, and for its invitation to the audience to deeply understand the immigrant experience.
Michael Elsener: How to Live in Paradise
TL;DR
Already a star in Switzerland, Michael Elsener challenges himself to perform entirely in English at this year’s Fringe- blending stand-up, storytelling, and flashes of magnetic character work. He unpacks the myth of Switzerland as “paradise” through politics and childhood stories, weaving in audience interaction with sincerity. His charisma, warmth, and skill at both unpacking politics and inhabiting characters make this a fascinating and generous performance.
Review
Michael Elsener may be a household name in Switzerland- he is called “the John Oliver of Switzerland”- but on the night I saw him here at the Fringe, he performed to an audience of five. That contrast feels like the essence of Edinburgh: international stars testing themselves against new ground. Elsener has set himself an ambitious challenge this year: to perform entirely in English, rather than in his native Swiss German. It’s a bold move, and what emerges is a show that is smart, generous, and full of exciting moments.
The premise, How to Live in Paradise, plays off the global perception of Switzerland as an idyllic haven. Early on, Elsener asks the audience what comes to mind when they think of Switzerland- mountainous scenery, efficiency, global banking- and he riffs off each with sharp political commentary and intelligent humor. But the deeper question he keeps circling is: if Switzerland is a paradise, why didn’t it always feel that way for me? That tension anchors the evening, and leads into deeply personal stories of growing up gay in a small Catholic town, hiding behind “neutrality” by first coming out as bi, and only later finding the courage to live fully as himself.
Where Elsener truly dazzles is in his character work. He has the ability to inhabit another person so fully that it’s impossible to look away. At the start of the show, he fluidly slips between several languages including Swiss German, French, Spanish, and eventually English, playing with the mic as though even technology is struggling to keep up with him. It’s a brilliant opening, showing off his range and establishing the theme of identity across languages. Later, his imitations are so vivid that the room shifts around him. It’s clear that this is where a strength of his artistry lies no matter the language, and I found myself wanting even more of it.
His stand-up sections are loose by Anglo-American standards, but that’s part of his style. Like John Oliver, you don’t always laugh every thirty seconds; instead, you trust that there’s a serious point being made, and that the humor will arrive as a release. Sometimes the commentary lands more in the head than the body, especially for international audiences less familiar with Swiss politics. Elsener builds the intellectual scaffolding- we understand what he means- but the next step will be making us feel the heat of his frustration so the comedy ignites universally.
He shows glimpses of that fire when railing against Switzerland’s direct democracy system. As he grows more impassioned, you can see him veering toward a kind of comic madness- that’s where his character work could fuse seamlessly with his stand-up, turning his own persona into a heightened character. The same applies to a section about attending a meditation retreat. At present, the laughs come from surface observations- a man belching, gender segregation, the awkwardness of being gay in that environment. They’re funny, but the deeper comedy lies in why he was there at all. His boyfriend, a psychologist, suggested he go; if we feel what’s at stake for him in that silence, then every belch becomes exponentially funnier because it derails something vital. That’s where his personal story, character work, and political edge can meet.
What sets Elsener apart from many comedians, though, is his genuine curiosity about the audience. In a bit of crowd work, he didn’t just mine answers for punchlines, he seemed authentically interested in what people said, and then skillfully wove it back into his set. It’s rare to see audience interaction handled with such generosity. Combined with his warmth, precision, and ability to slip between characters and languages, it makes him a singular performer.
How to Live in Paradise is already Exciting Work: intelligent, layered, and delivered with charm. With a little more heat translating his personal and political stakes into something audiences outside Switzerland can feel as keenly as he does, it has the potential to become unforgettable.
