Arcola theatre, London
Andrée Bernard’s solo show is a bizarre representation of one woman’s love life, minus depth and character development
This solo musical opens with a sex scene. A woman (Andrée Bernard) is pushed up against a closet by her lover. There is talk of taut flesh, unblemished skin and wrought muscle. And we return to this peak of passion against the closet, followed by the bathtub, time and again. But in between is a workaday relationship history that takes us from teen romance to a series of inappropriate partners, internet dates and a reliable-but-dull dentist. There are men who sweep the woman off her feet and others who reject her. You could call it a kind of sexual quest, in theory.
In practice, it is hard to work out what this bizarre show is saying. If the intention is to take a dive into the travails of modern love from a female perspective, it comes back up with cliches. Also written by Bernard, the romantic highs are so trite that they might be rehashed from the pages of a Mills & Boon novel (the erotic series) and the rest of the material is barely there.
