When she was six, Charlene thought "mistress" meant putting your shoes on the wrong feet. Now it's the early 1980s, and Charlene, a graduate secretary ("like having a degree in failure"), is trying on for size the persona of being a mistress. She already has the expensive beige raincoat, she's read Madame Bovary, and after attending four concerts "and two and a half museums" with a married man, she sleeps with him.
Based on Lorrie Moore's exquisite second-person short story, which reads like the advice column in a magazine, Natalie Abrahami's adaptation and production whisks us straight back to an era when the Bee Gees were kings, the disco dancing was frightful and the advertising didn't suggest that you were worth it, but that he might be.
The ensemble, who share the role of Charlene – suggesting that there are many Charlenes in our world – are a chorus of unreliable narrators, shopping advisors dishing out dubious advice as Charlene gradually starts to believe her own role-playing.
Abrahami's production has a glorious playfulness, like a child's game, and though it sometimes feels as if Moore's text does more of the hard work than Abrahami's visuals, the neat staging and clever ensemble playing make this a superior and enjoyable piece of theatrical chick-lit. For all its giggling girlishness, it is touched by a creeping tide of disappointment, presenting itself to the world like a woman who wears a bright red lipstick to camouflage her despair.
