Review: How to Date a Feminist (The Arcola)

How to Date a Feminist is billed as 'a romantic comedy turned upside down': it’s the man who’s the feminist! Meet Steve: son of a Greenham common activist who’s been raised to treat women with so much respect that when he proposes to Kate, he begins with a lengthy apology for the patriarchy. Rewind to their first date, and he’s asking permission to kiss her collarbone because he really, really believes in "explicit verbal consent". Unfortunately, Kate is into "lipstick, cupcakes and Heathcliff".

There’s potential in a topsy-turvy look at gender expectations, and the over-analysed tangles that modern lovers get themselves into. But Samantha Ellis’ play – although sprightly written with some whizz-crack lines – is as unconvincingly plotted as a bad sit-com, and lopsided in its character development.

Kate feels real: she’s also a feminist, arguing for equal pay and complaining about not being taken seriously in her job on a news desk, while still choosing to wear a padded bra and going moony over "bad guys". We all know about these sorts of contradictions, and the writing mostly allows them to breathe (although some double-standards sneak through unchecked: why is liking a bit of rough in the bedroom deemed Kate’s "neuroses" to be overcome, when it's allowed to be just her wolfish ex’s "sexual tastes"?)

But Steve! Steve is not really a character; he’s a mouthpiece for feminism, which we’re meant to laugh at because all the stuff coming out of his male mouth sounds so very dogmatic, po-faced and unsexy. And, unlike Kate, his contradictions – most notably that he claims to loathe patriarchal structures, yet is constantly trying to get married – never ring true. He’s also given some shockingly cruel behaviour, that comes out of nowhere and capsizes our sympathies; it’s really just a plot device, but it evaporates the required rom-com rooting for the couple.

It may be that the unevenness is due to Kate being somewhat autobiographical: Ellis, also a journalist, wrote the hugely enjoyable memoir How to Be a Heroine, which looked at her life through the prism of the novels she’s identified with. Wuthering Heights is the urtext for her; a key moment of self-realisation, as for Kate, being that Heathcliff is actually awful.

Sarah Daykin, who’s done a lot of TV comedy, makes Kate sparky, with sketch-speedy pace, but Tom Berish, although winningly dorky, occasionally plods as Steve. They both also have to play other love interests and each other’s parents, leading to hectic costume changes and a dubious range of accents; opting for more mature actors for the parents might have lent a sense of live-and-learn wisdom.

And yet How to Date a Feminist is so frequently laugh out loud funny, that you really want to warm to it. Ellis’ writing captures the finer, quotidian detail of modern relationships and there are moments of lovely intimacy which help you overlook the unsubtly of the debates about gender roles. But when you also can’t believe in the actual break-ups and make-ups of a rom-com, it collapses as surely as a cupcake under a high heel.

How to Date a Feminist runs at the Arcola until 1 October, and then on tour.