Take-A-Break Tales
Weasel & Sons – Festival Highlights
Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 3 – 28 (not 9, 16), £8.50 (£7.00), £9.50 (£8.00)
***
Stories of cheatin’ lovers and mothers and milkmen, lifted straight from the pages of tacky women’s weeklies, are a firm favourite with me and my mum, so off we went to Take-A-Break- Tales with glee and - joy of joys – it was complete and total filth (though some of the more straight laced contingent in the audience remained obviously not amused by the prison lesbianism / necrophilia / incest plot twists).

The comedy performances were on the whole well executed, and especially wonderful was the irate letter writer on the subject of obese children, though at times the script let them down.

The essence of the of the writing style of magazine ‘true life tales’ was only sometimes encapsulated in the dialogue, and the narration was a little too self-aware, mocking rather than celebrating an unusual aspect of British popular culture.

by Jane Buffham