The Other Palace, London – until 24 March 2024
Reviewed by Julia Spargo
5*****
A brief one-woman show called Karen featuring feminine rage was always going to pique my interest, but I wasn’t expected to be hit in the face with a tsunami of emotions and universal experience.
Sarah Cameron-West is our unnamed protagonist. She arrives on stage, sucking on a Calippo, as time is called on her four-year relationship by her boyfriend, Joe, on her birthday. The first five minutes are filled with her ensuing emotions as she digests this development and tries to persuade, cajole, and then becomes very, very cross. The rest of this one-hour show follows the aftermath of her break-up, as she realises Joe is leaving her for her office colleague, Karen.
Once I got over my very brief initial discomfort of Sarah Cameron-West unselfconsciously locking eyes on a member of the audience whilst enacting her side of a conversation (and for the break-up scene, that member of the audience was me), I allowed myself to be entertained. And entertained, I was. God, I laughed. I almost think Cameron-West could have done the full show with her facial expressions alone and we still would have enjoyed ourselves. Her initial hysteria at Joe moves on to a (partially true) relaying of the story to her (again, absent) friend, before coming face-to-face with Karen in the workplace. There was no need for other actors. Cameron-West has scripted and produced the show so beautifully the audience misses nothing and is fully involved in every conversation. We’ve all been there; the painful, unexpected break-up. The encounter with the office nemesis. The negative feedback from a boss. The casual but hurtful remark from a family member. So relatable is this story, and so beautiful are Cameron-West’s nuanced reactions, that the humour is there to be enjoyed in abundance. There are moving moments too. The glorious and utterly uninhibited scene of the protagonist prancing around in Karen’s lacy red thong, before screaming with rage in her own beige M&S briefs was particularly poignant.
Staging is minimal. Very few costume changes. A few sound effects, and great use of lighting to highlight the protagonist’s interior monologue as she remains (mostly) calm during an encounter with Karen about a stolen yoghurt. The minimal production leaves us mostly fixated on Cameron-West and her beautiful face. Go and see it, while you can still see it up close in a small venue like The Other Palace. You’re in for a treat.