Mollie Blue’s debut play is about the sales agent in Soho’s naughtiest knicker shop in Please Don’t Fall In Love With Me (it’s really not sexy when that happens).
It’s 2007 according to the show notes. The shop sells all kinds of knickers plus bras, hosiery, tassles and kinky accessories. The goal of the agent is to look desirable and make customers spend money.
It’s pre-Tik Tok and pre-Tory austerity. The agent (a naive and deliberately OTT Blue), and the bimbo (the brilliant comic and clown Poppy Taplin) are the ladies in pink dresses who compete to flirt with clients from Middle Eastern big-spenders to corporate sugar daddies.
Blue has populated her 80-minute play with lived experience from the sales agents of the time. Touching on issues from body dysmorphia to shoplifting, infidelity to perverted phone-callers, there’s a lot to unpack.
Please Don’t Fall In Love With Me … is first and foremost a very funny show. Gags both physical and verbal hammer through the story as we follow a few days in the store.
The bimbo is both in love with a plastic mannequin and repelled by it, feeling it has been watching her. The agent wants to live “like a man” with no consequences, but is trapped in the cycle of short skirts, high-heels, and hair tossing.
Comments on the customers who come in – we never see them – are cutting. One Man is dubbed ‘silicone Simon’ because he has never brought in his girlfriend. Americans “try on everything but never buy”.
The little pink dress and hold-up stockings of the store uniform and the trill of “Knickers Forever” is milked for power. It’s all very ‘shock-value’ but ultimately a bit sad.
A delivery boy (Ryan Dickson, who doubles us as the phone perv, the only customer we see) offers doughnuts and sweets and an ear for gossip and grumbles. He’s lively, fun, and friendly.
The story feels a little thin is places. A thread with a silver fox who seems to like the agent fizzles out; a promising recurring worry about carbs isn’t fully followed up.
Although some of the writing is sharp and focused, I felt that the phone calls were repetitive and a bit forced. I didn’t quite believe in the character.
The set of glittery curtains, a few strategically placed knickers and ribbons, and radio gave a decadent and sordid sheen to the knicker empire and those who consumed its wares.
Blue has focused on Soho, sex, and sin for her play, but rather than digging deep into its problematic aspects – beyond the closing scene – she chooses to develop Please Don’t Fall In Love With Me … as out-and-out comedy, with outrageous – if charismatic – performances to match.
The show blurb promises “this sordid little show hopes to give you an insight into this fascinating secret world, and the sexy, scandalous stories that ensue. It’s Doctor Faustus meets Bridget Jones. Silly, shocking and ever so sexy!“
I think it’s partially successful in this, but I left feeling the secret world was still firmly behind wraps, and the agent and bimbo’s best route was up and out.
I’m giving this 2.5 stars, because for me it doesn’t fully reach its potential yet – but it will, and Mollie Blue is a writer to watch.
Please Don’t Fall In Love With Me … is on at the Hope Theatre for its final performance tonight, 7 Apr.
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Photo credit: Ella Clarke