"I've been 'avin' a bit of a break," says Carol Fletcher, the heroine of Jenny Eclair and Julie Balloo's one-woman tragicomedy. You can say that again. Carol used to be huge - opening supermarkets, fronting exercise videos, sharing a sofa with Richard and Judy - but now the former reality TV star is an outcast, shunned by her public, her ex-husband, even her children. "Have you ever been spat at in the street?" she asks.
She who once shopped with Lorraine Kelly now lives with her mother and works with the "old and incontinent". "It's only part-time," she tells herself. "It's only temporary." At night she returns to her single bed, swigs Malibu and remembers her 15 minutes of fame.
And then she gets a second chance. Her slimy agent, who dropped her as soon as scandal scuppered her career, phones to offer more work: "It's telly!"
Will she take it? And how did she get here in the first place?
As her 44th birthday approaches and her loneliness deepens, Carol tells us the sorry story, from her childhood infatuation with a glamorous entertainer, to the night she two-timed her husband with a shag-and-tell barman. The way she sees it, her parents were dull - "It's like we were still living in black and white" - her spouse never had a dream in his life, and their daughter was born middle-aged. Carol's ringtone, we note, is There's No Business Like Show Business.
Eclair is terrific as Carol, with her foul mouth, pasty flesh and two-tone hair. You expect someone who started out as a standup to be able to connect with an audience; but Eclair also understands that actors do not have to be loved. She is not afraid to look shallow, or monstrous. That's a skill that becomes increasingly valuable as the comedy turns sour.
· Until February 20. Box office: 020-8237 1111. Then touring.
