Sindhu Vee: A Stylish Review – From Parental Dangers to the Pride of Enjoying Yourself

Reading Town Hall: Sindhu Vee's new stand-up tour on cross-cultural identity, Hollywood-style mashups, and exactly how honest she is about her children's art and handicrafts. How British is Sindhu Vee? And how Indian? These are the questions her new stand-up show Swanky addresses, in an exceptional opening where she takes the stage and, at a party, reckons with an old...

How British is Sindhu V? And how Indian? That's what his new stand-up show Swanky tackles, in a wonderfully self-contained opening that sees him count on an old duffer at a party. It's a theme that lends itself well to his nutty, skeptical style, as he talks about India-Pakistan relations, or later interrogates the assumptions of a petulant mother at the school gate. One might wish that the entire program revolved around this topic, but the larger part deals with the related, if not always revelatory, topic of parenting. And that's before we even touch on his sticky final segment, about another topic entirely.

Parent material dominates the display and ranges from general to specific. In particular, she has a huge age gap between her first two children and her third child, and many of the jokes are about how differently Child 3 is being raised - a sign of being caught up in the helicopter parenting of others and her younger self. Sometimes this leads to over-familiarity (teenagers and their cell phones), or cynicism, or both—as in the routine about the worthlessness of one's child's arts and crafts.

But at his best, his over-the-top momstick ("If they gas you, gaslight them!") has the ring of hard-earned truth — like Zoom's parental call in which he must, subliminally and strategically, inject life advice into a daughter who would otherwise never listen.

Such is Swanky's central section, and so is the deviating conjecture, with frequent lively digressions - including a short one on the uniquely English deployment of the word "kind". He's serious about these things, and I'm glad when he belatedly returns to the cross-cultural issue. This seems like the natural end point of the show, but he tells an over-the-top anecdote, about a misunderstanding on a Hollywood film set, then adds a whole new part: a hymn to the glories of female masturbation. There's no denying it hit the audience's G-spot—even if it looked like it came from another show entirely.