Fab Goualin @ Gilded Balloon Teviot

Jokes about how the precise mixture of your parents’ nationalities manifest to create one’s personality are such a staple of opening club sets that they’re considered hack by some. But Fab Goualin’s lovely debut hour runs head-on into that thicket and keeps pushing until it’s interesting. This is a show not just about being mixed-race, but about the intersectionalities of having both Black and white parents, of Nigerian and French heritage, of being gay, and of the twisty interrelations of class and race.

Goualin grew up middle class and suburban. He finds a rich seam in how his skin colour leads some to assume an altogether different background – a dynamic he cheekily plays with in the room and even with his stage outfit: the all-black clothes and beret of a Black Panther, contrasting with the easy charm and affability of Goualin’s performance.

Goualin covers a lot of ground in the hour, from his experiences coming out as gay to a traditional Nigerian family, to charming portraiture of his home life with his partner, to stories of lesbian weddings and medical procedures. All together, these routines add up to support Goulain’s central thesis: “When you’re intersectional, it can be frustrating getting put in a box”, with lazy assumptions easily casting people as “both insider and outsider at the same time”.

As the show reaches its conclusion, its tentpole routines – about a pair of linked misunderstandings at work – may feel too thin to be load-bearing, but that might be Goualin’s shrewdest move. While never underplaying the seriousness of the dynamics he’s looking at, Mixed Messages is gentle (not to say low-key), inquisitive, genuine and never overplayed. It’d be hard not to leave charmed, entertained, and perhaps nudged to think just a little differently.

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Fab Goulain: Mixed Messages, Gilded Balloon Teviot (Wee Room), until 30 Aug, 5.40pm, £13-£15