Review: ONE WOMAN SHOW, Ambassadors Theatre

Introducing Wildfowl: a life-changing new show about a woman just trying to find love - and herself - in today's world. A show that puts imperfect, damaged, real women in the spotlight, so they can finally tell their stories...

Except not really.

Liz Kingsman's One Woman Show is an uproarious parody of the genre, relentlessly witty and relentlessly self-aware. Following successful runs at Soho Theatre and this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the show runs at London's Ambassadors Theatre for only six weeks - and you should absolutely catch it while you have the chance.

From the London commute and edgy social media spoken word to dramatic orange-lit flashbacks and random mentions of sex, in Wildfowl Kingsman presents us with a fully-formed show-within-a-show that's a parody of itself. She squeezes every last drop of funny from every single line of her script. It's a fast-paced takedown of the chaotic white woman in her twenties working in the arts that we all know so well.

Ultimately, this is a parody of a certain one woman show that also ran at Soho Theatre and the Fringe before hitting the West End (Kingsman really committed to the bit!). But as accurate as it might be, calling One Woman Show a Fleabag parody feels reductive. Kingsman and director Adam Brace show a sharp awareness of not only the Waller-Bridge phenomenon but every other adjacent TV and theatre show, and then lovingly tear them apart in this electric seventy minutes.

Kingsman herself is a marvel. She delivers even the most ridiculous of lines fully deadpan, at once full of energy and perfectly dead inside. Her comic timing is consistently spot-on - a real challenge when the audience are laughing at almost every single line. She nails the physical comedy too: one second she is assuming that all-too-familiar 'holding on to the tube' stance, the next she is leaping around the stage with a dry-ice dispenser.

What really makes this show remarkable is that the parody is far from one-note. There's a level of nuance woven into the story, steering the show away from ever feeling mean and instead reminding us of the reasons behind its creation and the sexism that very much still exists in theatre.

At the same time, Kingsman isn't afraid to push things into the realm of the ridiculous. She delivers a twist to Wildfowl that will surely go down in history as one of the most fantastically unhinged plot points to happen on the West End, and constantly proves that she can find unexpected comedy in every last sentence. This leads us to a truly deranged ending sequence that I won't spoil here but has to be seen to be believed... and involves a lot of feathers.

A special mention must also go to designer Chloe Lamford and lighting designer Daniel Carter-Brennan. The pair take a show that would seemingly work with just a chair on stage and fully transform it, with the set and lighting landing their own punch lines and adding a whole new layer to both Wildfowl and the parody beyond it. The simple chair is surrounded by a 'moat' and plants, fitting with Wildfowl's deliberately heavy-handed nature metaphors. Meanwhile the mosaic squares that provide the lighting give us both flocks of birds flying overhead, and a head-banging club techno 'rock bottom' sequence. The stage becomes integral to the comedy of the piece, funny in itself.

It's true that One Woman Show likely got a little more laughter than usual on its press night: with an audience full of London critics and theatre/TV people, the jokes about tube stations and the theatre industry were certainly appreciated, and not one reference went unnoticed. The show's comedy manages to be both specific and generic in a way that should appeal to pretty much everyone however, especially considering the overwhelming success of Fleabag. Even those who haven't seen the TV show would likely be familiar enough with the concept to enjoy this, and even if not, the absurd, outrageous twists and turns make it impossible not to laugh.

It's rare to see a show that so clearly parodies something else make it to the West End, but One Woman Show is undoubtedly deserving. Not only that, but it holds its own: every element of the production, from the writing to the performance to the sound, lighting, and set, are of a quality that clearly belong where they are. This is a real example of a show that's made the transition from Fringe to the West End seamlessly.

It feels wrong to write earnestly about a show so fabulously unearnest, but One Woman Show really is all that. I think I was smiling for the entire show, start to finish. Liz Kingsman deserves the BBC Three show, the awards, the Bond writing gig, the acting role in Indiana Jones, and more.

One Woman Show runs at the Ambassadors Theatre until 21 January 2023

Photo Credit: Ellie Kurttz

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