Aideen McQueen @ Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose

As the title suggests, Waiting for Texto is a parodic interactive comedy play about the existential hopelessness only being left on read can provoke. Beneath Aideen McQueen’s naturally charismatic sense of humour, themes of isolation and hopelessness are a constant presence; this is, to be frank, about as far as the Waiting for Godot parallels go. Still, her insights on the ways that modern technology separates us from each other and even ourselves are poignantly accurate and painfully relatable.

The takes which McQueen offers us on technology, modern society, and particularly on gender are nothing new. However, by establishing the audience as her flatmates listening to her relationship woes, she involves us on a personal level. It’s easy to see conversations you’ve had with your own friends in the show – it’s even easier to see McQueen as a friend. She’s the sort of friend you worry about, the one who always seems to have a glass of red in one hand and her phone in the other, with a new man on the go every other week. She’s looking for ‘the one’, she says. But it’s easy to see beneath all her self-help books and online tarot readings that she won’t dare truly look inward.

Technology gives us an easy excuse not to look inward, McQueen quickly finds. Amid phone calls from her various loved ones, there’s hardly time in the hour for her to think about the future – and she certainly doesn’t want to think about the past. Over and over, we hear uncomfortable mentions of an event from three years ago that altered the trajectory of McQueen’s life. We purposefully never find out what this event was, but we can make our guesses. It’s a personal and heartfelt portrayal that never quite dares to speak its own name out loud. What does speak loudly to her audience is her admission that she needs help, an admission we all may have to make some day.

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Aideen McQueen: Waiting for Texto, Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Nip), run ended