Samia Rida @ Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose

The set-up for Samia Rida’s one-woman show, Kidnap, is tantalising. Abducted along with two siblings as a child, and taken by her father to Saudi Arabia, the potential seems limitless. It’s therefore a shame that the show never quite hits home.

Much of this is not Rida’s fault, and she has drawn a very short straw to be hosting her intimate, personal show in a room which is simply not capable of blocking out the shrieks and applause from the rowdier show next door. This is a common Fringe issue, and to her credit, Rida rarely lets it get to her. More frustrating is the nature of the narrative, which never makes up its mind what it wants to be.

There are shocking moments, and some warmly comedic lines, but ultimately Kidnap never quite feels laugh-along funny enough to work as comedy, and is too light to work as pure drama. Rida has many bones to pick with modern life, notably her disabled brother, narcissistic sister, and off-hand mother, but what the audience may lose in all of this is the actual thrust of the kidnapping on which the show is based. Without wanting to sound cruel, you get the sense that the ordeal itself was simply not that traumatic compared to the suffering she experienced back in the UK.

We’re left with a show that sometimes feels more like therapy than comedy. While Rida has long riffs on multiculturalism, she seems strangely unwilling to enter the realm of the political, beyond a slightly dated reference to Suella Braverman – remember her? It’s a great shame, as the content should be compelling, Rida’s delivery is sharp, and the audience is on her side. Perhaps this is a show that should have been a podcast. 

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Samia Rida: Kidnap, Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Dram), run ended