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Charming Sadie Frost

Published: 7 June, 2012
by PAVAN AMARA

Touched... Life a Virgin is funny, excellently written by Zoe Lewis, and a charming performance by Sadie Frost brings it to life.  

Frost is Lesley, the daughter of a socialist, feminist mother who never does the cleaning, and lives her life in a northern town with, frankly, not a lot going on.

Teen Les becomes Madonna obssessed, partly out of boredom and partly because her early sexuality responds to the Queen of Pop’s sex-laden music videos.

She is desperate to lose the weight of her lumbering virginity, and Madonna’s done it, not once but lots of times, and so becomes something of an idol for the uncertain, still-a-virgin school girl.

You can’t help but laugh as Frost brings the teen Lesley’s life into an equally mundane and hilarious portrayal mirroring the majority of drab teenage let-downs – the entirely disappointing first time sex, heart-stopping pregnancy scares following, and the first boyfriend who’s not the most scintillating conversationalist in the world, but who does provide some comfort.

And then onward, to 30-something Lesley, all shagged out, “hanging out” with 17-year-olds for company, and desperate for a child of her own, mightily washed out and looking for some form of something stable.

The production is an hour long, and Frost moves around the space through Manchester, Camden, and New York City, and from the 1980s to 2001, but not necessarily in that order.

That’s the confusing part, it would work a lot better if it didn’t jump around from a 15-year-old Lesley to a 30-some thing and back again within 10 minutes.

And Frost’s location in the production needs to be slightly better thought out, as there were instances where large swathes of the audience couldn’t see her.

Madonna’s back catalogue is merrily sung between scenes by a glitzy David Wickenden of Four Poofs and a Piano fame.

This play is made for a great girls’ night out, but males and females in the audience enjoyed in equal proportions.

Until June 9
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