Mollie Semple’s solo show, Good for Her! at The Other Palace, introduces us to Iris, a former child star (in one popular series in the US), and daughter of a narcissist.
A vision in pink, down to her finger and toenails, Iris works dead-end jobs while waiting for the big break that will never come. Growing up and out stopped her being the family cash cow, and Mum (voiced by Jacquetta May) has never forgiven her.
A sheen of desperation threads through Good for Her! as Iris makes increasingly bizarre internet searches, stalks her school friend Alice’s Instagram, and goes for auditions.
She’s obsessed with her physical looks and appearing successful, even though she hasn’t acted or had an agent since puberty more than 15 years ago. Life for Iris is fantasy mock-ups about her greatest success, and the cold reality of caring for a mother who needs her but never respects her.
The ending seems inevitable. The character is so spiralling, self-loathing, and unstable it is hard to root for her. A Zoom audition with a bored male director is pure cringe; a recollection of the dancing she learnt at stage school pitiful.
Good for Her! tackles ageism, body shaming, self-absorption, and the reliance on image over talent. All good points, and Semple writes and plays the role well, but Iris is bitter, bitchy and, well, just a pain to deal with.
The staging offers a sense of Iris’s insecurity; a heart pillow with arms is both a comfort and a threat. The sound design is often uncomfortable, with pips, thumps and taps that feel oppressively loud.
Bringing in Mum’s illness, particularly in one graphic scene, feels at odds with the piece as it stands. The pressure of failure and the feeling that you can be thinner, taller, prettier is the interesting core of the play.
Although Good for Her! has its light moments, I felt it was an awkward imbalance once Iris became an uncaring carer who locked her mum in the lounge and resented her very presence.
It was hard to connect with this one, and the ending, with its suggestion of damage amplified beyond all repair, felt too harsh for what is billed as a ‘darkly funny comedy-thriller’.
I’m giving this 3 stars.
Good for Her! continues at The Other Palace Studio until 26 Jul.
Photo credit: Malachy Luckie