Writer: Sarah Cameron-West
Director: Evie Ayres-Townshend
Being dumped is bad enough. Being dumped while eating a Calippo at Alton Towers, on your birthday, while expecting your boyfriend of four years to propose? That’d send anyone spiralling.
And that’s where Sarah Cameron-West’s unnamed protagonist enters our lives at the start of an hour of consistently hilarious comedy. Cameron-West gives us her character’s half of several conversations as she deals with the tumult of breaking up with her boyfriend, Joe, while coping with the realisation that he was already seeing their mutual coworker, Karen.
It is a testament to the writing and performance that each person that the protagonist encounters feels just as fully formed as the character on stage. The contrasts between the protagonist’s outer demeanour and her inner flashes of rage, artfully and humorously portrayed by precision-timed flashes of red from lighting designer Oliver McNally, further draw us into the world Cameron-West creates.
Her world is further enhanced by a little audience interaction. Front-row audience members are handed props – a wine glass here, a coffee cup there – to transform them into the protagonist’s confidantes as she tries to articulate her feelings and her plans to move on.
If the titular Karen remains a mystery despite what we learn of her – that she coasts at work, taking credit for the protagonist’s efforts on the project they’re supposed to be doing together, and that she sews her name into the sexy lace underwear she leaves at Joe’s place for the protagonist to find – by the end of the hour, we feel we know her type indelibly.
But it is the protagonist within whom we see ourselves: ultimately good, yet prone to flashes of something darker – and when we accept that rage within and direct it appropriately, there is the potential for positivity to break through.
Sarah Cameron-West gives us a character who, after an hour in our presence, may not always have kept her dignity. But she does give us an hour of top comedy with a protagonist to adore.
Continues until March 24
