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	Laughing Horse @ Jekyll & Hyde (venue website) Comedy 2-15, 17-26 Aug, 7:00pm-8:00pm Reviewed by Martin Lennon
Free and unticketed. No pre-booking required.  Recommended for age 18+ only. Venue may not permit under-18's - check with venue before booking.

It's easy to approach free shows with a degree of apprehension. However, when you find a comedian like Stella Graham, you wonder why she isn't playing to bigger crowds at bigger venues. While she still has a lot of work to do, I doubt there will be many free shows as good as Karma Comedian.

She is probably the only half-Sri Lankan, half-English female comedian to come out of Coventry, and a lot of her routine is based around these aspects of her life. Although she has lived in New Zealand for the past five years there are some attachments from her hometown she can't shake off. These include an overbearing mother and an overachieving doctor sister.

Rather than deliver routine monologues, she wants us to judge her, and her actions in the past. She tells the audience about something she’s done, and in return she wants the audience to tell her if she is going to heaven or hell for it – hence the ‘Karma’ in the show’s title. It's an innovative and fresh concept and one that the crowd responds to very well. In between, she also interacts with the audience in other ways, asking questions that keep the flow going (for example, what’s the worst song you’ve ever made love to?)

Graham is a natural on stage. She is confident in a likeable way and her one-liners are quick and well-constructed, with her Midlands/Kiwi drawl making the jokes even drier. Be it her teachers advising her to use a crisp packet in the event she didn't have condoms (an empty crisp packet, that is), or remarking how Aer Lingus sounds slightly pornographic, she delivers them all expertly.

What shines through the most, though, is her likable personality, cheeky without being too brash. Even when she did carry out some more sinister deeds, the crowd would still send her to 'heaven' simply because of the connection she created with them. And although some jokes were quite Coventry-centric, they seem to represent the feelings of most trapped souls in modern post-industrial cities.

What the show lacked in professionalism can probably be attributed to the fact that she has just started out. There were several jokes which did fail to impress, for example a story about hippies and methane gas which people just didn't understand. At times she used non-autobiographical stories to gauge a heaven or hell reaction, including one about Bear Grylls (a TV adventurer) which seemed totally out of context.  With regards to the physical side of her comedy this appeared slightly exaggerated and sometimes a little too laddish in its approach.

Overall, however, there are lots of negative preconceptions about the 'free show' label – that you will waste your hour, for instance – and Stella Graham confounds them all. In a few years, it will be a surprise not to see Graham rising up in the comedy world, as long as brings this good karma with her.