An Audience with Virginia Woolf: Writing One’s Mind, Assembly Rooms.

You too can have A Room of One’s Own – one where you decide the rules and what goes on there. That’s at least part of the message of Lucy Stevens’ intricate and engrossing play, an intelligent digest of Virginia Woolf’s work and life. Undoubtedly one of the great voices of 20th-century literature, Woolf has fascinated readers and academics over decades and Lucy Stevens gives a quietly authoritative performance as Virginia herself, constantly popping in and out of books as a kind of comfort blanket, reflecting on what motivated her and taking us through the most significant stages and mind-opening awakenings of her life. We learn about how she was sexually assaulted as a child, the achievement of “killing the Angel”, and how the move to Bloomsbury contributed to Woolf’s constant search for truth and identity. As a student, I desperately wanted to like Virginia Woolf’s works, but I always found them annoyingly difficult to read. However, this play made me not only want to revisit her works but also to find out more about her. Ms Stevens easily makes you believe Virginia Woolf is in the room with us! An elegant and literary start to the day.

The Longer My Mother is Dead the More I Like Her, Greenside @ George Street.
There’s an art to mother-management; most of us learn it the hard way. Deborah Unger’s relationship with her mum veers from the tetchy to the impossible, an atmosphere created from her earliest memories when she realised Mom wasn’t the cookie-baking, warm-hugging type of mother but the kind who keeps secrets and deliberately files away information as ammunition for the future. But Debbie doesn’t get it all her own way in this show, as dead Mom also gets to butt in with some observations and home truths. Structurally, it’s a confessional narrative, with daughter Debbie setting the pace, but Ms Unger really comes to life when giving us some of her mum’s unwelcome interruptions. There are some entertaining characterisations of the people in Debbie and Mum’s lives, and the only prop is a sequence of changing photo cards, confirming the time and place of the story’s progress – not that they lend much to the proceedings. Although she likes her mum more now that she is dead – the clue is in the title – we never really see the transformation from irritated, put-upon daughter to loving, mentally at ease daughter. Nevertheless, it’s a smart, engaging hour from Deborah Unger, based on her own experience, and there will be something here that everyone will recognise from their own childhood.

The Problem, Assembly Rooms.

We’ve all been there. A perfect system works perfectly until somehow, unpredictably, a problem emerges. But how to solve it? Hopefully we’d all do better than Slater, Manning and Wilson, who display increasingly bizarre coping and solving strategies which descend into paranoia, chaos and general ludicrousness. Very slickly performed by Matthew Boston, Brian Dykstra and Patrick Frederic, who give their all in a three-way fencing tournament of wits where only the bravest gain attention and only the strongest survive. If you like an ensemble piece of wordplay, this may well be your cup of tea. It’s the kind of show that divides an audience; for me, the absurdity of it all stretched my credulity and, I’m afraid, patience beyond breaking point, but their commitment and skill are never in doubt.

Gareth Waugh: Is Pepsi OK? Monkey Barrel Comedy.

Fans of stand-up comedy are familiar with the concept of comedy as therapy, where a comic relates a tragic sequence of events to help them come to terms with what’s happened to them – frequently sacrificing laughs for the sake of their mental health. In Is Pepsi OK? Gareth Waugh has already come to terms with the hurt and damage caused by a very proficient conman, but there is still an element of healing therapy as he relates the extraordinary events of the summer of 2023. En route, there’s some great material about performing stand-up on cruise ships and at a darts tournament, but it’s the story of his work with Coca-Cola that dominates the hour. Gareth is a terrific storyteller and his tale is engrossing – indeed, frequently anguish-inducing – even if it isn’t always laugh-out-loud funny, and he works hard to spin it into the most positive experience he can. So many morals to this tale: I’d recommend checking the veracity of email addresses first.

Two Halves, TheSpace Triplex.

A thought-provoking two-hander where rising woman’s football star Sophie and fading Welsh rugby player Sean start a relationship following a chance meeting at an American sports awards ceremony. A series of intensely written and tightly performed scenes reveal pivotal moments in their relationship over the coming years, when both sides show the strain of facing scrutiny under the spotlight of social media and the physical demands of their chosen professions. The pressures of both being at very different stages of their careers, and even the importance of superstition rituals provide an additional level of tension. A combination of romcom, sports docudrama and psychological breaking points, it’s riveting to watch, and unusual and original subject matter for this very promising first play by Sam Rowlands and direction by Zoe Lerman, who also appear as Sean and Sophie. Recommended!

SpinQueen, Greenside @ George Street.

Feeling insecure, unfit, or generally worthless? No problem, leave it to Meg to put you through your paces in a 45-minute spin class, where good posture reveals emotional brittleness and measurable numbers count for everything. Our wannabe theatre kid trainer must have a golden existence with that toned body and her inexorable drive. But we’re only human and sometimes the miseries of real life perform mission creep on your daily workout… Megan Tomei gives an outstanding performance as the irrepressible but surprisingly fragile Meg for whom not even exercise is the answer to everything, Three-quarters hilarious and one-quarter absorbingly tragic, it’s simply staged with just a spin bike, a very clever stage make-up effect (I’ll say no more) and one of those hearty musical workout tracks. SpinQueen gives us a heartfelt and horrifying peek into the real life of someone truly on the edge.