When Liz Kingsman’s brilliantly silly One Woman Show opened at the Soho Theatre in 2021 I suggested that comedy fans do everything legal to get a ticket. Having now enjoyed an upscaled version I’d reiterate that. In fact maybe even break a minor byelaw if it helps you get to the gig.
In this interval-free self-penned monologue, Kingsman plays a satirically enhanced version of herself, an aspiring actor filming her solo set, entitled Wildfowl, to send to a TV commissioner. Her nameless play-within-a-play fictional incarnation works in the London Wetlands Centre and her job involves marketing, although she is so scatty she does not quite know what marketing is.
This scattiness extends to off duty time too. Now approaching thirty she talks about her friends posting on social media about having their lives sorted – being selected for a Mars mission, for example – and frets about being a mess by comparison. She, by contrast, has one night stands and does not know where she is in the morning. Luckily she tends to be at home and just struggles to work it out.
It has been observed that Kingsman is sending up Fleabag – never named yet definitely alluded to – and the wider trope of chaotic, goofy, messy women, which does the gender a disservice and perpetuates stereotypes. But this is less a direct parody, more a show that works on multiple levels. Kingsman, who originally made her name in sketch group Massive Dad, has crafted a masterpiece that never misses a trick.
There are inspired moments that send up theatrical artifice itself. At one point she refers to an onstage moat that has hitherto been completely invisible to anyone in expensive stalls seats. Elsewhere a pivotal speech is undermined by a creaky prop. Even crafty sips of water become an excuse for a visual gag.
The script is pitch perfect, from wilfully overwritten lines about commuting on the “underground train network” and “I’m just having a remember”, to breaking spontaneously into performance poetry or sending up romcom love scenes that jump randomly from location to location.
While there are clearly political points being made about how women are portrayed in art, the serious message would not be conveyed so succinctly if the wit was less sharp. Kingsman executes every comic twist and turn exquisitely.
Director Adam Brace helps to sustain a pace that never dips. The set consists of little more than a swivel chair which has its own comic moment in the limelight towards the end. Though nothing can upstage Kingsman. The number one comedy of 2021 is now also the number one comedy of 2022.
