Cautionary Kate

Most of us have two voices in our head – the optimistic, day-dreamy, wish-fulfilment angel and the pessimistic, everyone-hates-you, nay-saying devil. But Kate’s are a little louder than most.

This flimsy one-person by Katie Sherrard sees her heroine pulled in different directions by her equally unhelpful imaginary friends, loudly mic'ed over the action. Kate wakes up, bleary, from a party where she got too drunk and made a fool of herself doing karaoke in front of this guy she’s crushing on. Her good angel tries to swaddle her in a nice dream—essentially the plot of My Fair Lady—but the bad angel intrudes with cringeworthy memories of the night before.

This pattern repeats for 45 minutes, as Kate indulges her fantasies—winning an Oscar, wowing people at parties with her dance routines, bagging an Olympic gold medal—before being brought rudely back down to earth, and practically ground into dust, by fears that everyone loathes her, her friends think she’s boring, she’ll never win her man.

Sherrard infuses the show with energy, trembling with self-loathing one minute and gleefully strutting the next. She’s got good comic timing, and confidently draws the audience into the action. But, oh, the material is more insubstantial than one of her daydreams. There’s an appealing character in here, but there is not yet a show. The final big realisation—that even if things don’t work out perfectly, taking action is better than living in a fantasy world—is the sort of message you’d expect of a children’s book.