Review from the Women In Comedy festival

A child defying a strict parent to follow their passion is a classic plot, used in the likes of Billy Elliot, Bend It Like Beckham and countless more. And for good reason, given how effectively such a story can address clashes of culture and generations through an inspiring journey.

In Hajar Woodland's well-told real-life version, singing on stage was her passion from the moment she took part in the school production of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The resistance comes from her Iranian father’s strict conservative Muslim values, which meant that as soon as she hit puberty he considered any public performance not just haram, but akin to prostitution.

Yet a headstrong teenager so obsessed with the Spice Girls she wrote them a very ill-judged Christmas song – rejected, for very good reason – was never going to be stopped. 

Woodland brings a lot of emotional honesty to her story, told with lightness and – crucially – nuance. Her relationship with her father is complicated, and he’s portrayed with more dimensions than a simple tyrant, so repressed about his own feelings that he can criticise his daughter only via email. Meanwhile, she is still a Muslim, albeit one of a different stripe from her old-school father, who remains a rich source of comedy material.

Elsewhere in the show she talks about the intolerance she’s encountered for wearing the hijab, yet also how being light-skinned, via her English mother, gives her white privilege, a peculiar combination.

Whether its 1990s Dawson’s Creek nostalgia or a more contemporary relationship with a white guitarist, Woodland's accounts are evocative, eloquent and told with good humour. ‘It’s hard to be horny in a hijab’ is a stand-out line. 

Hajar, Like Badger loses some of its narrative steam once the ideological tension between father and daughter dissipates with Dad’s move back to the Islamic Republic after his divorce, but Woodland still has frank and funny material on topics relevant to her current life, such as dating younger men.

Deploying her crisp, powerful voice, songs are her superpower used here sparingly and effectively to garnish the narrative with her own compositions, which, thankfully, have progressed since those days of sending unsolicited numbers to the Spice Girls.

Underpinning the amusing autobiographical stories is a sadness as to why it had to be a such a struggle for Woodland to pursue something which brings her such joy – and which she clearly is damn good at. That’s brought powerfully home when she gives thanks for the freedom she has that so many Iranian women are denied under the nation’s appalling leadership. A sobering conclusion to an entertaining, insightful and upbeat hour.

Review date: 13 Oct 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Manchester The Fitzgerald