Written and performed by: Bex Turner
Our hostess for tonight’s snappy set of bawdy comedy arrives in feather boa and the glittery garb of the golden age of cinema. “Maybe West” is the first in a handful of characters who share the lurid details of their sex lives with us. What results is a whirl of costume-changing stand-up and clownery which unfortunately mostly falls flat.
Maybe West, a washed-up Hollywood starlet, is obsessed with oversharing about her sex life. This consists almost entirely of jokes in the form of “I like my men like I like my…”, which often serve solely to demonstrate that anything can sound dirty if you try hard.
She is heckled by a pre-recorded sleazy producer-type who reminds her that she’s worthless and unfunny. Which leads us to feel like we may be entering an anti-comedy cringe fest with a satisfying narrative arc, but it remains stuck in the unhappy valley of asking us to laugh at bad, vulgar wordplay without much payoff of pathos or character development.
We also meet a silent cinema actress called Sally Tosis who only communicates via silent movie style dialogue cards. There is some crowd work attempted here, and at various times throughout the show, but we’re not quite given enough to go on for any chemistry to be built. The set would have gone down better in a rowdy late night environment, where the audience are willing to give more back, but here we’re never quite put at ease.
Then there’s a Scouse wartime agony aunt with tales of her sexual exploits, all told with a similar reliance on gross-out punchlines, a trope which feels somewhat overused. It feels like we never quite see the true character of these ladies laid bare, which would help get us on their side. There is a germ of a more interesting show here that is never explored. The only glimpse of this is when Maybe West’s “I like my men like…” jokes seem to implode and she’s on the verge of some kind of breakdown/breakthrough, but it remains, unfortunately, underdeveloped.
Reviewed on 14 November 2025
