Edinburgh Fringe Review: Sindhu Vee, Pleasance Courtyard

It may come as a suprise to some people to realise how outspoken, frank and funny Indian women can be.

Having spent a bit of time in Delhi, where Sindhu Vee was born, I’m more familiar than most with this phenomenon.

But it is still a refreshing change to hear this voice coming from a comedy stage in the UK.

Sindhu Vee makes the most of the playful expressive style, vocabulary and rhythm of Indian English. She even drops into Hindi, Punjabi and Gujurati to make a comic point about motherhood.

Vee has a lot of fun with exaggeration and hyperbole and also gets a lot of mileage from comparing herself with polite, well-behaved and restrained British people.

As a performer she is charming, likeable and not at all afraid to make herself the butt of the joke. She’s also happy to confound the stereotypical view of Indian women, talking frankly about sex, misbehaviour and always getting the upper hand.

Vee is happily married to a Danish man and has three children. The focus of her show is about how to maintain happiness when you are married and have children.

It’s a familiar subject, which a lot of comedians have explored and Vee’s ethnicity, contrasted with her husband’s, gives her an unusual angle. But she doesn’t really have enough to say on the subject to sustain an hour of comedy.

There’s a prevalent reverse sexism among certain female comedians, where the fact that women are secretly in charge becomes the joke. It’s only really a joke if you secretly think men should be in charge. I’m not sure any of us really think that any more.

Why do all these supposedly strong women continually define themselves in relation to men? I don’t get it.

Vee returns again and again to the subject of marriage and how she likes to get one over on her husband until it starts to feel like one joke, repeated for an hour. It’s a shame because I really like her – but the ‘Take My Husband’ material really starts to wear a bit too thin.

Until August 26. Tickets here.

Read more Edinburgh Fringe reviews here.

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