New York comedian Gianmarco Soresi was recently at the market when he was approached by a stranger. She was a fan, she said, celebrating her 60th birthday. “Thank you for not doing Riyadh,” she added.

She was referring to the Riyadh Comedy Festival, the controversial two-week event sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government where some of the world’s biggest stand-ups gathered to make jokes about how you can’t say anything any more. The line-up included the likes of Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle, and if you thought they’d been cancelled you’re not among the stadiums-full of followers to which such supposed casualties of wokeness still play.

It’s true that Soresi’s stand-up does lean a little towards the progressive side but he was quick to point out to his admirer that he’s no political propagandist.

“I’m like, first of all, I wasn’t invited to Riyadh. And second, I don’t want you to like me for my morality because I might disappoint you, and ultimately that’s not what I’m trying to sell. I want you to be able to laugh at a joke where I’m a bad person, even if it’s just theoretical for the joke.”

Easier said than done. During the past decade or so, the comedy world has been saddled with the same political baggage as every other corner of social life – choose a side, plant your flag, toe the party line. Where once a comedian’s job was to make fun of everything, now they’re expected to be mouthpieces for the stark political rivalries that social media has fomented.

“A comedian’s job is to address the thing that’s weird or silly or unusual or needs to be talked about. So, unfortunately, it feels like the worse things get, the more it’s hard to not address it … I don’t think you have to, in theory. But it can be tough to laugh about owning a dog when there’s a fire around you. You want to talk about the fire,” says Soresi.

Amid the conflagration that is American public life, though, Soresi has somehow managed to craft a comedy persona that doesn’t conform. In fact, he’s the kind of comic that New York culture website Vulture describes as “undeniably universal”, a descriptor that surely hasn’t been applied to much else this century.

Soresi has always tried not to preach to the choir: “If I critique everything all around me, inevitably, if you are someone who needs to be agreed with sometimes, you’ll find some stuff that we are on the same page about. And that might give me enough goodwill to talk shit about the thing you find sacred.”

Gianmarco Soresi studied musical theatre at college and can sing, act “and be annoying”.Credit: Todd Rosenberg Photography

The line between skewering the sacred and being plain mean is wobbly. Soresi’s act can go to very dark places but his audience knows they’re in safe hands. “I find that when I go to a traditionally conservative city, the audience will be more queer and there’s more hair dye and septum piercings, and a furry now and then, because they know here’s a safe place for them to enjoy comedy, and enjoy f---ed-up comedy, in a way.”