Mistress and Misfit, Shappi Khorsandi’s latest set, has been built around Admiral Nelson’s squeeze, Emma Hamilton. Or at least, that’s what it says on the tin. Certainly, there’s a portrait of Lady Hamilton on stage throughout the show, but for most of the 75 minutes it’s Khorsandi who hogs the limelight. We’re left with another diverting hour of Shappi chat – about mothering, reality TV, her poet dad – grafted more or less crudely on to a whistle-stop biography of the blacksmith’s daughter turned love of a national hero.
It’s never entirely clear why Khorsandi is telling that story in particular, beyond her obvious identification with Emma’s up-by-the-bootstraps life story. The comic makes a compelling case for Lady H as a strikingly modern figure, trapped in and stifled by life as a pawn and plaything of wealthy men. But Khorsandi’s parallels between her life and that of her Georgian-era subject are a bit forced, and Hamilton’s presence in the show – sitting alongside unrelated material about attending children’s parties and turning down literary prizes – can feel arbitrary.
The literary award in question was the Jhalak prize for writers of colour; Khorsandi reprises – but doesn’t much develop – material on the subject she trialled when last at Soho, 18 months ago. Elsewhere, jokes about Britishness and her dad’s exile from Iran are recycled from previous sets, as is the characterisation of her son and daughter as English and Middle Eastern stereotypes respectively. The newest material covers her recent stint on I’m a Celebrity – as caustic as you’d expect, even if her surprise at how idiotic the show turned out to be seems a mite disingenuous.
It’s all likable enough – Khorsandi is nothing if not a convivial host – and there are droll sections on her social unease and on a pragmatic sexual encounter in Amsterdam that fosters her kinship with Hamilton. Another skit, quoting 18th-century reviews of Covent Garden prostitutes, raises a few gasps, and also the thought of how rich the show might have been had Khorsandi fully committed to its historical conceit.
- At Soho theatre, London, until 19 May. Box office: 020-7478 0100. Then touring.
