The Hemline Index @ Pleasance Courtyard

Fringe virgins Portmanteau present a neat little comedy about being 24 years old, female, and doing a bit of shopping on your lunch break. Set in two dressing rooms, two women try on skirts that seem appropriate to a 1984 aspiring personal assistant (mid-thigh, tight) and a 2014 blog-writing, online shopping helpdesk drone (midi length, pastel colours).

The stage design is simple but effective with the whole play looking like a split screen: in the dressing room on the left it’s 1984, the protagonist’s blouse has padded shoulders and her hair is hysterically puffed up. The dressing room to the right is set in 2014, and here our heroine is sporting a crop top and faded pink locks. The two women reflect on their career plans – or the lack thereof – and their romantic hopes and dreams, and the stage design implicitly invites a comparison of their situations. Have women made progress in the work place? Is their over representation in university graduates doing them any good?

The Hemline Index totters around the edges of such questions (and of course, the relation between skirt lengths and economic performance) but fails to provide the audience with hard-hitting new insights. Nevertheless, it feels topical and manages to make the age-old combination of women and clothing feel fresh and at times very funny.