Angelo Tsarouchas, the Montreal-born comedian of the Greek diaspora, brings The Diaspora Tour and its stories of growing up Greek abroad to the Leicester Square Theatre.
Greek diaspora comedy takes a West End stage on Saturday 3 October, when the Montreal-born comedian Angelo Tsarouchas brings The Diaspora Tour to the Leicester Square Theatre.
Tsarouchas was born Evangelos Petros Tsarouchas in Montreal in June 1964 and has worked as a stand-up comedian since 1998. His career rests on the culture clash of growing up Greek in the western world: the family, the arguments and the double life of a name few outside the community can pronounce. For two decades he has been billed as the king of Greek ethnic comedy. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he works as an actor and writer alongside the stand-up.
The material works through storytelling rather than one-liners, and it is built on the particular rather than the general: the grandmother’s verdict, the wedding, the weight of a first-generation accent. He tours it across Europe, Australia and North America, to diaspora audiences who recognise every detail as their own.
The Diaspora Tour is his new show, and it turns his travels, his family life and the absurdities of the everyday into long-form stories. The Leicester Square Theatre opened in 1953 as Notre Dame Hall, part of the rebuilding of the neighbouring church after wartime bombing, and it seats four hundred people. The Clash previewed London Calling on the same stage in 1979.