Touched … Like a Virgin
Strong female performers often provide the role models for young women
struggling to find their way. These days it’s Lady Gaga; in the 1980s
it was Madonna, the icon for the ‘have it all’ generation of women
brought up by feminist mothers who wanted their daughters to be free –
to have a career, sexual relationships and, most of all, to be happy.
For
Lesley, that’s an ideal she always seems to fall short of. As she grows
up, Madonna becomes the blueprint for her own life, mirroring the
singer’s personal reinventions, as Lesley goes from council house child
wanting no more than a semi-detached, a husband and a bunch of kids, via
Oxford University, New York’s Met Bar and to a fertility clinic in Sweden.
As it turns out, where Lesley ends up is not really that far from where
she always wanted to be.
Sadie Frost‘s Lesley is smart, likeable and funny, with a keen sense of
what she’s doing and where she’s going wrong. Frost demonstrates fine
comic timing as she convincingly takes the audience through Lesley’s
story from teenaged virgin to grown-up mother-to-be. The story is
underscored by songs from Madonna‘s back catalogue as sung by David Wickenden (4 Poofs and a Piano), ably accompanied on piano and guitar by Ben Osborn. Wickenden doesn’t have a particularly good or strong voice, but he gets
away with it through a mix of charm and camp while dressed as an
alternative undertaker in dark suit with silver sequined shoes.
James Phillips‘s direction keeps the pace up as the action moves around the small cabaret-style space. Among the humour, there’s a
message about the pressures and conflicts of feminism, but it’s woven in
with skill so as not to frighten off the blokes in the audience.
Half-play, half-cabaret comedy, Zoe Lewis’s Touched Like A Virgin
is a delicious encounter for a summer evening.
