Ava Vidal, Soho Theatre - comedy review

Vidal is engaging and amiable but this “project” might work better as a light-hearted book than a show
20 September 2013

When it comes to hinterland, Ava Vidal has plenty to go around. Before she was a comedian she worked as a prison officer in Pentonville while she was a single mum. She has dug into her own colourful history for previous performances and now, in He’s Not A Keeper, she mines other people’s pasts.

The title comes from a Facebook page she created, asking readers to contribute stories about their car- crash searches for Mr Right. She was quickly inundated with tales of feckless, unfaithful men with dirty habits, zero social skills and a tendency to come out with feeble “dog ate my homework” fibs at every opportunity. This enjoyable monologue largely consists of Vidal working through these anecdotes.

Some entries are so outrageous they hardly need any embellishment to be horrifically funny. Men who talk constantly about past lovers. The man fixated on his mother like “some kind of black Norman Bates”. Between these excerpts the frank raconteur reveals her own predilection for Mr Wrongs. Her first major boyfriend had a flashy car but could burp for England.

Vidal is engaging and amiable but this “project” might work better as a light-hearted book than a show. In a year when feminism came to the fore on the Edinburgh Fringe with Bridget Christie’s Foster’s Award victory there’s something dated about He’s Not A Keeper. And as a performance it lacks the passion of Luisa Omielan’s What Would Beyoncé Do?, which took a more intense approach to dating game travails.

He’s Not A Keeper is not dull, it just feels like an early draft. We never get close to understanding why women are drawn to hopeless cases. Instead we just get obvious songs, such as Carly Simon’s Your So Vain, to underline points Vidal has already made. We did, however, discover that the Northern line is the capital’s sexiest Tube line. Stockwell station may never seem quite the same again.

Until tomorrow (020 7478 0100, sohotheatre.com)

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