Donna Disco

Donna Disco is like a Belle and Sebastian song made flesh. Stuart Murdoch et al might not have actually penned a tune about our 14-year-old heroine, but she inhabits their lyrical hinterland of dreamers and loners.

And for most of this one woman show, a cardigan of twee is wrapped around it – which makes its ending even more of a crack to the solar plexus.

Donna is a perennially bullied, permanently lonely teenage girl. She wears horn-rimmed glasses. She is overweight. Her only friends are mix-tapes of Abba and The Beatles.

For a school pageant her class are given a storytelling assignment. Her classmates are paired off and must tell each other's stories. Being the odd one out, Donna decides to tell the story of her ballroom dancing transvestite neighbour.

With attention to small details and references, writer Lee Mattinson and actress Paula Penman have nailed the breathless mood of being 14. It is a time in life when every single event is the most important thing. Ever. It is the only time in your life when you always refer to your peers by their full name. It is also when bitchiness rules.

And then comes the pageant and its unexpected conclusion, like Carrie re-written by Morissey. Without it, Donna Disco would have petered out into a gently comic, sad-sack ramble complete with sock puppets. Instead it lingers. Just pray it isn't raining when you leave the theatre – it might be too much.