Like a Virgin

Gordon Steel’s heart-warming romp through teenage-hood provides a blissfully nostalgic theatrical experience. Angela and Maxine, donning leggings and hauntingly familiar Madonna t-shirts, bound and giggle their way through a troubled script, which requires their energy to keep it afloat.

The show opens with a hackneyed domestic tussle, "it’s not working; we can’t go on like this," cue anger, cue the marital slap, cue wifely pleading and door slamming. This opening highlights two flaws which go on to undermine the rest of the show; the script is dated and the performance given by the character of Viv, Angela’s mother, is wincingly awful. One other key failing of this play is the complete absence of a narrative arc. A broken home and a fragile mother produce an inconceivably self-reliant girl who hangs out with her mate. The girl gets cancer. End.

Angela’s diagnosis, which is the crux of the play, is dolloped into the second half of the show with no warning thus catalysing a story line about terminal illness that is then performed with baffling nonchalance. However, where the script fails the central performance supports. Angela is depicted with beguiling candour, witty and feisty; this performance outshines the rest of the cast. The set is also impressive, it’s simple and malleable and effectively creates atmosphere in such a small space. Laughs are sporadic, but well earned, and the teenage enthusiasm of the girls captures and maintains audience attention throughout. The production is slick and the acting is, at times, impressive – Bubblebum theatre has done well to make the most of a rather flaccid play.