Michael Mittermeier: A German on Safari

Talk about having your cake and eating it. Michael Mittermeier is quick to dabble in ironic Nazi references, branding his venue a bunker as soon as he takes to the stage and going on to suggest he has unfinished business with the roomful of allied audience members. We're confident that he's joking at these points, but as he staggers before us, groaning and contorting his face in what he says as an impression of a 'handicapped' person, it's difficult not to at least question his views on eugenics.

It should come as no surprise that 'Germany's best-selling comic' is happy to casually mock the most vulnerable people in society for the sake of a few cheap laughs. After all, his entire set is constructed around uninspired reactions to difference and otherness. There is simply no room for the individual in Mittermeier's hackneyed, nationalistic world view. We must all be defined and categorised.

Over the course of his Edinburgh debut, we learn that each country differs greatly from the next. For instance, Germany has no speed limit whereas the UK does, meaning that everyone in the former drives recklessly while we go at a slower pace. Honestly, the people of each nation couldn't be more different if they tried! When the comic reveals that phrases from certain languages don't always survive translation with their meaning intact, we interpret this as an explanation for the clumsiness of his own material. As he treats us to a comedy impersonation of an Indian man, however, it becomes clear that A German on Safari's many faults stem from Mittermeier himself.