How would you describe my vibe, Sophie Duker asked friends one day, and – quelle surprise – she didn’t get the answers she was fishing for. Niche, said one; intense, another. But the most common response: daddy issues. Now here comes Duker’s new show, But Daddy I Love Her, to explore why. It was prompted, she claims, by her absent father’s proposal that they attend therapy sessions together. Could there be any better raw material, asks Duker, for a comedy show?
At the very least it licenses much navel-gazing gaiety as Duker considers how she appears to others – and how she would like to. Is she hot or cool? Might she pole-dance, and does she have “main character energy”? There’s certainly plenty of the latter – more so than actual jokes in the early stages. But the show gets more compelling with the introduction of the 34-year-old’s mum and distant dad. The former in particular is vividly drawn: “dressing sexy, but only for church”, her piety manifesting itself in some improbable hoarding habits.
But it’s dad who caused the issues – which presumably explain his daughter’s entanglement with an online sugar daddy (or “sugar-free”, it transpires), and her routine comparing men to XL bullies. In her dad’s favour, he does seems to possess (as does her mother) that prized quality of “delulu” – self-confidence bordering on the delusional – which Duker’s show sets out joyfully to celebrate.
And so, Duker and her father reach out across the years of separation and agree to receive counselling from another of her vivid characters, an expansive Italian therapist called Michelangelo. It can’t help but feel anticlimactic that Duker then draws a veil of secrecy over the sessions that follow and which supposedly inspired the show. A musical number based on The Candy Man from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and notable mainly for its tunelessness, makes for a poor substitute. But Daddy I Love Her is a show that ruminates rather than reveals, but does so with gusto and a winning warmth towards its delulu protagonists.
At Soho theatre, London, until 19 October
