Presented by Pierpoint Productions

Review by Laurie Kimmett

Playground 1 at ZOO Playground

A stage awaits an audience. On it sits an easel with a blank canvas, a table well worn with drips of paint and paintbrushes its only decoration, and a single chair to the right. This is the set of Electra Kolb’s Father, Away She Goes, a scathing one-woman show written and performed by Kolb herself.

Kolb plays Sarah, a young woman you (mostly) love to hate. Sarah is narcissistic, rude to others, inconsiderate, often mean – and worst of all, she’s aware of all these things. After being rejected from art school, and getting into a fight with her mother, Sarah is living in her ex-best friend’s family home, renting a room and skulking around avoiding others. It quickly becomes apparent that she’s about as welcome as a cold sore, and the events that lead up to her eviction unfold. Sarah decides that there’s no way she’s getting rejected again, and her ruthless ambition unfolds, asking how far would you go to get what you want?

It’s a well-trodden path in theatre (just ask Macbeth), and Kolb doesn’t add many new ideas to the discussion. Her ruthless ambition isn’t ever massively explained, other than a short origin story explaining why she enjoys art, not do her further goals ever get touched on. The script is nevertheless slick, and Kolb jumps from topic to topic with ease and grace. Her characterisation is impeccable, and despite all her nastiness, Sarah never slides into a pantomime villain. A tricky thing to do in a production like this, but Kolb dances along the knife edge and makes it look easy.

The writing is also mostly funny. Kolb’s impressions of Sarah’s mother, and the mother of her best friend, are hilarious and show a true gift for physicality and comedy rare in someone her age. Some of the jokes don’t quite land though – gags about feces and farts come across as juvenile rather than clever and one-liners about Trump and Bridgerton already feel a little dated.

There is a huge tonal shift towards the end of the play which needed a little work in order to feel part of the same show. Despite this abruptness, it provides a much-needed swerve away from cliche and marks Sarah out as a chilling and unsettling character. With a deft hand, Kolb has marked herself as one to watch out for.

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