Pearl Necklace

It’s not often that you are invited to go an "intimate physical journey" by a woman wearing a dress that bears a remarkable similarity to a massive shuttlecock. In such blunt terms the appeal is not strong but Pearl Necklace is in fact a very effective interpretation of poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s ode to the binge-drinking generation.

Slow-motion chundering, a good two minutes of retching and one-woman wrestling resembling activities more usually found in a padded cell are not the most obvious things you would pay to see. However, these in fact successfully channel the many personas of this multi-voiced poem.

Teenage pregnancy, miscarriage, rape, prostitution and in the case of Adrianne, parental expectations and the ability to repel the opposite sex, are all confronted with appropriate humour and poignancy. Simulated miscarriage is distressing to watch but tempered with enough artistry and poetic license to be intellectually provocative rather than sensationalist.

Although at times it does resemble a striptease, (as she peers at you, legs akimbo, or sucks a gherkin) it does replicate the spectrum of female experience and behaviour Duffy addresses. Although the initial helium-voiced melodrama perhaps confirms some perceptions of physical theatre, by the end of the "journey," the destination is not one of scorn but admiration for a woman who is unafraid of throwing herself around a stage, VPL flashing with wild abandon.