Beverley - A One Woman Show | The Pink Paper review

Promoting dyke sex?  
Marcel Wiel finds out how lesbian sex helped Beverley find happiness.

After a string of successes, Natasha Langridge's 'Beverley - A One Woman Oddity' is another winner for the Tristan Bates Theatre.

Actress Valerie Frances plays the heterosexual Lorraine Chase-type talking head, who tel[s us of the sexual ups and downs of her boozy, druggy life. She, She can 'buy her own kitchen', but is surrounded by envy at work and promising yet unsatisfying lovers in bed.

What's real about the performance is the way it mirrors the sexual freedom many lesbians and gay men have given themselves. Beverley lives the economic and political emancipation professional success has brought her through a proactive approach to sexual encounters.

She attracts some bastards and wankers along the way. She's full of 'hope, after an inspiring start to a new relationship, only to realise she's been the idiot who's been bankrolling the whole thing, and has been taken for a sucker and ends up with a smack in the mouth.

Eventually, she discovers some deep truths about love and beauty through sex with an emotionally reliable, occasional lover and his girlfriend.

Very similar in plot structure to a Greek myth, we witness pit-stops of invariably bad experiences on a road to self-discovery. The climax in the arms of her two steadfast friends is epic in its honesty and beauty. Thanks to great lighting by Don Atherton, you can almost hear a heavenly chorus as the penny somehow drops for the hapless, but always sympathetic, young woman as she sees the light.

What's great about the play is the way it depicts the heterosex-ual lifestyle of a woman, who's adopted a gay mans code to sexual morality, and eventually finds happiness through lesbian sex.

Heralding fierce and compelling talent, critically acclaimed in the mainstream press and guaranteed to wow the most jaded of audience, Beverley is an educational experience, sure to convince infrequent theatre-goers of the errors of their ways.        

'Beverley - A One Woman Oddity' will be playing at the Edinburgh Fringe (dates to be confirmed). 

Review by Marcel Wiel.