Fucked

This monologue has already awarded itself two stars by substituting them for the U and the C in its publicity. It's actually about several mornings after the nights before, when the full word is the way the narrator is feeling rather than what she's been doing.

In a sequence of titled short scenes, moving backwards from “whore” to “virgin”, we hear about the shortcomings of a series of men, and shortcomings is very much the correct description. Hope for the night ahead has always turned to disillusion in the cold, grey light of morning.

However the danger of this becoming a dismal list of inadequacies is removed by the heroine's bounce. Also her optimism that the romantic medieval visions of her youth might one day come to be, just that she should not to expect the knight to be wearing shining armour, nor indeed to be very adept at rescuing ladies in distress.

This feels like a writer/performer piece but a little research reveals it to be Becci Gemmell speaking Penelope Skinner's words. Very good words they are too, full of lovely, if unflattering, pithy descriptions of the habits of men out on the town. The performance is so good that these words sound as though they are tumbling out spontaneously from the lively young woman in front of us.

It's good to see this sparky if modest piece of theatre getting a late-night slot at the Assembly Rooms. It's well worth facing the possible embarrassment of buying a ticket for.