Arnold Wesker's The Mistress

Samantha is a dress designer. She's also a mistress, the mistress of her best friend's husband. Nor is he her first man, not by a long chalk. But he is the one who triggers her guilt.

How can she care so much for a man who would betray her best friend, the one she would make any sacrifice for? Except, of course, when she is having sex with her husband.

As she waits for his promised phone call, or his letter to say it's all over, she frantically scrawls dress designs on the brown paper that covers the floor. She also writes guilt cheques to some of the many charities that demand her attention. And she faces the many silent accusations of her three dressmaker's dummies.

Arnold Wesker's lava flow of a play pours out in an ever more frantic avalanche of words, fueled by guilt, chocolate and Jack Daniels. It needs total command of instant mood switches and precise changes of tone and emotion. It certainly gets all of that from Australian actress Martha Lott, starting composed and elegant, ending exhausted and drained.

Guy Masterson's direction ensures that her prowling, her obsessive sketching and cheque writing, her direct addresses to the audience, all engage us with her disturbed inner life, and never detract from it.

This is one of those power-house solo shows that the Fringe is so good at showcasing. Now funny, now disturbing, Martha Lott delivers one of those emotional roller-coasters that won't let go of you.