Four years after the delightful coming-of-age special, “Homecoming King,” and one year after the cancellation of his satirical Netflix news show, “Patriot Act,” Hasan Minhaj returns with his ongoing “The King’s Jester” tour.
Weaving together tales of Saudi Arabian embassies, infertility and run-ins with the parasites behind Alden Global Capital, “The King’s Jester” is a chaotic and hilarious one-man show, detailing the impact of fame on Minhaj’s new family. I went to his sold-out performance on Nov. 5 in Houston, Texas, and it was one of the funniest nights of my life.
The show began with a quick update on Minhaj’s life after having his investigative news show canceled by Netflix. Jokes about his new child quickly devolved into a long section devoted to Minhaj’s infertility and his resulting muses on masculinity. Before attempting a dangerous surgery from an underqualified doctor to fix his issue, Minhaj attempted to convince his wife that the couple should adopt a white boy and give him a Muslim name in a reversal on the trope of self-righteous white Americans adopting Indian children to flex their generosity.
It’s Minhaj’s hilarious way of declaring his success while juggling complex and extremely personal topics. Due to the sacrifices of him and his parents, Minhaj has earned his place, both in America and on the stage. A common thread linking “The King’s Jester” to “Homecoming King” is that immigrant struggle, and while “Homecoming King” focused more on the seeds his parents planted in Minhaj during his suburban Sacramento upbringing, “The King’s Jester” devotes its time to the garden that sprouted in his adulthood — that garden being the six-season run of his journalistic comedy show on Netflix, “Patriot Act.”
Minhaj delves into his stint criticizing dictators and the euphoria that his influence brought him. In his second episode ever, Minhaj got international press coverage for his brutal takedown of Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That episode was removed from Saudi Netflix, creating a viral story and giving Minhaj some much-deserved attention. Minhaj then joked that he had become like a drug addict since the insane amount of media coverage gave him so much dopamine that he felt obligated to go after the elite again.
Trump, Bezos, Jinping, Bolsonaro and Modi are just a few of the powerful names Minhaj devoted half-hour long takedowns to, giving him more attention, more clicks and more likes. Minhaj became insatiable. In one joke, he asked an audience member what the most amount of likes they ever received was. When the audience member responded with “900,” Minhaj sprawled on the floor, declaring, “If I got 900 likes on a post… I would jump off a bridge.”
Despite the media bliss, that amount of attention came at a cost. In a harrowing juxtaposition between the euphoria of thousands of likes and the reality of dictatorial power, Minhaj described the shockingly tangible death threat his family received in the mail from one of the leaders he criticized. That death threat caused him to rein in his “Patriot Act” episodes and focus on becoming like P Diddy, or the guy who gets rich and old as his more talented rivals die off.
In a delicate balance between personal and political, Hasan Minhaj recounted the past few years of his life in a hilarious fashion that had me rocking back and forth in laughter. “The King’s Jester” is an exquisite return to the stand-up stage, and I was thrilled to see it live.