Nabil Abdulrashid @ Pleasance Courtyard

If you take one thing away from Nabil Abdulrashid’s Fringe debut, it’s that he is a natural storyteller. The man tears through accents like he’s running through a paper wall, and has as animated a face as you’ll see on any Edinburgh stage this August. 

The Purple Pill begins and ends on Croydon High Street, jotting a line from the local Afghan butchers to martial arts to homelessness. Abdulrashid paints a picture of his community for us, stretching the boundaries of the imagined setting with every new character he embodies. At the speed he shifts between them, you can imagine him at the helm of a one-man/multi-character sitcom.

The show is smart and reflective, dissecting how to speak to people with different views to you – whether they are political opponents, family, or conspiracy-theorist friends. Some of these are treated with a healthy dose of scepticism (“if someone served you a chicken and the right wing was filled with maggots, would you trust the left wing?”), but Abdulrashid is also a model of empathy and understanding, describing for us how his wife was able to change his mind on the issue of Shamima Begum’s citizenship.

Abdulrashid is that rare performer whose charm allows him to take shots at vast swathes of his audience (comedy critics, other comedians, white liberal middle class people – this is the Fringe after all), whilst managing to keep them all on side. His stories are as vivid as they are funny, and so he gets us to relax and trust him before gently prompting us to reflect on our own behaviours. He succeeds with aplomb, demonstrating over the past hour that he can do the same; he’s not asking something of us that he wouldn’t attempt himself.

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Nabil Abdulrashid: The Purple Pill, Pleasance Courtyard (Beside), until 27 Aug, 6.05pm, £11-13; extra shows at Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs), 19 and 25 Aug, 11pm, £13