Ava Vidal: The Hardest Word

Ava Vidal’s defining quality as a standup is her bluntness, that refusal to sugercoat her observations and an abrasive sense of self that finds it difficult to back down and apologise to another comic when she’s offended them.

Generating laughs by perpetually mocking her own daughter makes her an intriguing performer as you never know quite how far an audience will stay with her. And in matters of race, she’s playfully hypocritical, justifiably condemning the media for its artificial concept of “black community leaders” but chiding The Guardian for not giving this ethnic minority a good review.

She has some wry routines on Australia’s racism and The Mother’s Union and she successfully calls Beyoncé on the contradictory messages of her music and videos. The real meat of her show though is swipes at left-wing figureheads, as she condemns those who feel they’re above having to apologise for their mistakes. She’s remarkably restrained in not crowing about her bête noire Johan Hari’s downfall and there’s a certain daring in dismissing Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry in a liberal milieu like the Edinburgh Fringe. But she’s undoubtedly mistaken in citing the fiction of Muslims “stealing” Christmas as left-wing rather than right-wing propaganda and she hasn’t sufficiently formed her thoughts on the Hackgate scandal to make a decent routine of it.

Nevertheless, while she’s instinctively contrary and frequently inconsistent, Vidal is reliably distinct and usually a compelling listen, with perspectives that challenge dominant media discourses.