We are not given the name of the main character in this one-woman show, but certainly know that her office nemesis is called Karen. We meet the protagonist just as she is being dumped by Joe, her boyfriend of four years, and it quickly becomes clear that Karen is a negative force in her life beyond the office too.
Sarah Cameron-West’s monologue was compared to Peep Show and Fleabag at last year’s Edinburgh fringe and you can see why. Like the latter, it is confessional, intimate and sheds insight on female anger, envy and feelings of inadequacy. Cameron-West performs energetically and there is real promise in the writing, but it touches on themes rather than cracking them open to say something beyond the tropes of its more famed forebears.
In Evie Ayres-Townshend’s production, we see the protagonist at work and packing up her life with Joe while swigging red wine like an angry young Bridget Jones. One-way conversations are conducted with various unseen characters including her mother, and we learn that she has a “free-spirited” sister who is trekking across Peru while the protagonist is mired in white-collar life. These family elements – which might bring more depth – are skirted across while the romantic heartbreak is too generalised.
The drama sometimes includes reflections on its own construction (“Did I just say that out aloud?” she asks) and Oliver McNally’s lighting design is part of the artifice. Inner turmoil is captured in flashes of red, for example, when the monologue goes from conversational to bursts of internal anger. Cameron-West comes off the stage to talk directly to us, as if we are the other characters, and switches cleanly between these inner and outer voices. But none of it is penetrating enough, while the forcibly happy end seems to betray the gritty reality of this woman’s life.
At the Other Palace, London, until 23 March
