It’s called semantic satiation, when you say a word so many times it starts to lose its meaning. Something of that effect is on display in this new touring show, which asserts – over and over again, in one life-and-work yarn after another – that Dawn French Is a Huge Twat. The young Dawn tries to be pretty by twitching her nose? Twat. Actor Dawn screws up the American accent for Kenneth Branagh’s movie Death on the Nile. Huge twat. Ageing Dawn misunderstands her doctor’s diagnosis when he treats her gammy knee. Twat twat twat.
If the object is to ingratiate herself with the audience (as if she needed to), French’s twat conceit works a treat: this is an enormously likable show, whose host revels in tales of her own self-mortification. But the motif is stretched way beyond breaking point. A significant handful of French’s anecdotes don’t demonstrate twattishness in any way – like the one about refusing to perform a sexist line in a Comic Strip script, or the one about Dustin Hoffman’s eccentric visit to her West End dressing room. Engaging stories they may be. Illustrations of French’s supposed “staggering stupidity”, they are not.
