Sarah Hanly
(Picture: )Sex, drugs, eating disorders and the malign influence of Ireland’s religious patriarchy are all given the same larky treatment in this fizzy solo show, written and acted by Sarah Hanly. It’s an impressive debut work and a bracing, magnetic performance. But much of the ground it covers fits the “messy woman” trope that comedian Liz Kingsman mercilessly skewered in One-Woman Show at Soho Theatre recently.
Hanly has something about her of a sunnier Denise Gough, and her character Saoirse recalls the addicted actress Gough played in Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places and Things. The tone, though, is pure Derry Girls. Saoirse’s Da has run away and her Ma is shacked up with a priest. Saoirse herself confides to her friend Aisling about cheeking the nuns at school and discovering orgasms through “giving each other tickles in the oratory”. Even her bulimia is given a jokey spin: chocolate tastes the same coming up as going down, but cornflakes scratch.
