The Girlfriend Experience

Synopsis

Tessa has set up a business; a brothel by the sea where mature women specialise in the Girlfriend Experience, a surprisingly caring and sympathetic service. As the women stoically strive to make a living in a competitive market, their personal lives start to crumble. Will they ever have loving relationships outside work and enjoy being girlfriends themselves? This play is created entirely from edited conversations recorded inside a real brothel.

Our Review:

24 September 2008

Alecky Blythe’s latest verbatim drama employs her favoured technique – the actors listen to recordings of their characters (in this case working girls in a Bournemouth brothel), and repeat the lines shortly after. Almost like a script-in-hand, only with headphones.

But that’s where comparisons with rehearsed readings end, for The Girlfriend Experience (a reference to a service offered by the ladies which is as much about emotional as physical intimacy) is a slick and polished production, played out by a bold and affecting cast. Debbie Chazen and the prolific Beatie Edney play lovable prostitutes Tessa and Suzie. Between 30-minute stints with various punters, they fold laundry, watch Jeremy Kyle and build flat-pack furniture. This is a wholly domestic arrangement, an ordinary basement flat which just happens to receive more visitors than the Queen.

Tessa and Suzie are assisted by Poppy (superbly underplayed by Lu Corfield) a...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

Granny Smith - 1 October 2008:

I nearly pee'd my pants!...

Read more and add your own review