The first job artist Bar­bara Tate had in Soho was in a bar.  Soon she was charmed into work­ing as a maid for Mae,  a ‘glam­or­ous West End Girl ‘. Ken Duncum has adap­ted Tate’s mem­oir about her time work­ing for a pros­ti­tute in Soho. It’s fun and fizzy in the first half before things turn more ser­i­ous (and sur­real)  in the second half.

Vic­tor­ia Abbott (Bar­bara) plays the trans­ition from uncer­tain inno­cent to com­fort­able, con­fid­ent woman with spir­it. Jes­sica Robin­son (Mae) provides a con­trast­ing por­trait of a woman ini­tially con­fid­ent in her allure then gradu­ally slid­ing towards being depend­ent on someone else. These two act­ors are the strong heart of the play. It is fas­cin­at­ing to see their rela­tion­ship played out in eye con­tact and small phys­ic­al ges­tures. They are sup­por­ted by a tight-knit ensemble who play a mul­ti­tude of char­ac­ters.  Heath­er O’Car­roll, Gav­in Ruther­ford, Bry­ony Skil­ling­ton, Hay­ley Sproull and Paul Wag­gott whirl around the stage provid­ing Vaudeville style sound effects, and half seen (yet fully formed) char­ac­ters. Dir­ect­or Dav­id O’Don­nell has obvi­ously worked very hard along­side the cast to help them achieve such a coher­ent per­form­ance.

Design­er Andrew Foster has worked with a recon­figured theatre space to cre­ate a ver­sat­ile stage. Set pieces are on wheels and are moved around to sug­gest dif­fer­ent spaces. The (many) cos­tumes by Jane Boo­cock are eleg­ant yet simple (and desir­able.)  Light­ing, Mar­cus McShane, and Sound, Gareth Hobbs, have to sup­port a vari­ety of per­form­ance styles which they do.

Tonight (10 August) Circa are throw­ing an indoor street party to accom­pany the per­form­ance.  Sounds like fun – just like this show.