Confessions & Obsessions of a Thirtysomething Divorcee

Printing a large pair of almost-naked breasts on the flier is one sure-fire way to draw attention to a show, and there is certainly quite a crowd waiting to see Confessions & Obsessions of a Thirty Something Divorcee. Yet eye-catching fliers do not necessarily make for memorable shows and this, unfortunately, is the case with Melanie Sherwood’s predictable and uninspired one-woman play.

Sherwood’s production, which is based on her own experiences, introduces Xara Fox – 38, single, childless and, shock horror, divorced. As Xara gets ready for the wedding of an ex-boyfriend, she chats to her “best friend”—which, incidentally, is her vibrator—about her life choices, her hopes and her fears. This makes for a list of issues which would make Bridget Jones proud: being too fat, getting wrinkles, being a disappointment to her happily-married parents, getting too old to have children, and growing old alone. You get the idea.

The play purports to be a "moving portrayal of one woman’s journey of self-discovery and ultimately self-acceptance," yet Xara’s "self-acceptance" by the end of the play occurs only because she has been asked out on a date. “Divorce,” she says nauseatingly as she puts her “best friend” away, means “having a second chance.”

Sherwood seems to be convinced that society stigmatises all thirty-something female divorcees as failures who are desperate to find a man. If this is indeed the case—and with almost half of all marriages in Britain ending in divorce, it is questionable—the quasi-autobiographical character of Xara Fox will do absolutely nothing to change our minds.