I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: January 20, 2026] Sonia Vai

I have made a list of all of comedians from Taskmaster who I would like to see live.  It’s not everyone of course (some of them don’t do stand up and some I don’t think I would enjoy).  I never really imagined that I would see everyone on the list as many British comedians do not tour the U.S.  But imagine my surprise when Paul Chowdhry announced a show in Philly.

I didn’t know there was going to be a warm up act until the day of.  I hadn’t heard of Sonya Vai, who is a NYC based comedian.  She immediately joked about the empty seats saying it was the traffic or that Indian people are just always late.

This landed hard until she told us that she herself was Indian, even though she doesn’t look it.

Most of her material was about being in her 40s and single.  This line of comedy–I need a man, it’s hard to date–is pretty tired.  And as a rule I don’t know that there’s a lot you can do with it, especially since so many women comedians are doing so much better topics.

But she had some funny takes on it.  Most of it had to do with her dad giving her a hard time about being single (done in his accent).  She told a story about a guy dropping dead at a wedding when they were really hitting it off.  And another one about a guy who roofied her but then left (her father: he just wanted you to stop talking).

There was also a whole thing about freezing eggs and how it would be better to just be able to freeze the baby until you wanted it.

Overall she was pretty good.   Maybe it was the mostly empty venue that made it feel less funny?

It was also weird that there was a 20 minute intermission–usually the headliner comes right on after the warm up, so we are warmed up.