Modesty: “I don’t speak for all women …” Swagger: “… but I do speak for many.” Prashasti Singh’s Divine Feminine shuttles between these poles, now deprecating her own foibles as a thirtysomething unmarried woman in modern India, now running the rule over gender politics in the 21st century. A deft balance is struck, with enough self-mocking silliness to endear herself and keep us entertained, but some arresting thinking too about Singh’s home country and its progress towards female liberation.
That’s the subject under interrogation here, albeit refracted through the confusions and contradictions of a woman who grew up wishing to be a man. Few of the female role models on offer in India seemed terribly inspiring – and the one that did, a high-achieving distant relative, undercut her inspo standing with a very unsisterly warning against spinsterdom. No wonder our host swings wildly between pride in her independence well into middle age, anxiety that her descent into “crazy lady” status may soon be irreversible – and therapy sessions advising she reframe her sadness as a colourful personality trait.
It’s engaging stuff, even for audiences like me, who could hardly be more of an outsider to the material. Singh also performs in Hindi, and her audience tonight includes many who could watch her in either tongue. I’m sure the material, suggestive as it is of a culture at a slightly different point on its gender-politics trajectory, is even more relatable to Hindi speakers, featuring as it does occasional asides and knowing gags about Bollywood star turned rightwing politician Kangana Ranaut.
Singh has mixed feelings about her, just like her mixed feelings about everything else – except the inadequacies of the opposite sex, which can be taken for granted. We leave Singh being persuaded by a self-help podcast to connect with her “divine feminine” and reject the masculine rat race. It won’t go well: we know that by now. But in her heartfelt yet doomed attempts to square the vicious circles of freedom and femininity, singledom and self-improvement, there is plenty to amuse.
• At Soho theatre, London, until 20 December
