Tag Archives: Damian Robertson

REALLY GOOD EXPOSURE

★★★★

Soho Theatre

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REALLY GOOD EXPOSURE

Soho Theatre

★★★★

“Prescott’s writing is dynamic and light”

In ‘Really Good Exposure’, Megan Prescott charts the fictional Molly Thomas’ evolution from teenage starlet to porn star. Prescott, who appeared as Katie Finch in the hit teen series ‘Skins’ in the 2000s, draws on her own and others’ lived experiences of exploitation and grooming in the entertainment industry to address a plethora of issues: the sexualisation of minors, the financial barriers to the pursuit of a creative career, and women’s (lack of) agency in the commercialisation of their bodies. In doing so, the actor-writer weaves a compelling and intersectional, if somewhat didactic, web.

Prescott delivers a strong and self-assured performance, easily filling the stage at the Soho Theatre all by herself. Her portrayal of Molly Thomas alternatively as a child, a teenager, and a young adult feels sincere and consistent. In this, she is aided by Hattie North’s precise and extensive sound design, particularly the many recorded voices that Molly constantly converses with – her mother, her agent, a casting director. Recordings, of course, inherently don’t really ‘respond’ to a performer like a fellow actor might, underlining the unyielding nature of the characters’ demands of Molly. Additionally, the voices’ incorporeality (if I may) reinforces the central fact that the characters they portray all profit off of Molly’s body, and her body alone. Director Fiona Kingwill dresses Prescott in a bedazzled set of underwear even in the scenes from Molly’s childhood, allowing her to highlight continuities between sex workers’ costumes and what girls wear in dance competitions, for example. It’s touches like these that make the interplay between Prescott’s acting and Kingwill’s staging of the play feel refined.

However, Kingwill’s heavy dependence on tech sometimes takes away from the emotional punches the script delivers, particularly in the latter half of the play. Though Rachel Sampley’s lighting design is beautifully done, the videos she created to be projected to the back of the stage sometimes overpower Prescott, while montages of tweets and newspaper headlines felt unnecessary and teetered on cliché. The overreliance on tech is best illustrated by the effectiveness of a moment in which it is turned down: in a central scene, Molly is essentially forced to strip naked while auditioning to play a stripper. Her anguish comes across very well precisely because there’s no projection and the music is eerily quiet, as if being played in an empty dancing hall. Literally nude on stage, Molly comes across as ‘truly’ naked for the first time because she cannot hide behind loud music, stage lights, or projections.

Prescott’s writing is dynamic and light, though it loses some of its focus towards the end of the play, with the scenes in which Molly partakes in ‘Romance Reef’ (a.k.a. Love Island) feeling rather gimmicky. Additionally, the final monologue takes on an overly didactic tone. As Molly, Prescott essentially tells the audience how the show is meant to be interpreted, spelling out the message that sex work can be about taking control of your body and sexuality. It is a powerful and controversial stance in a world where sex workers are simultaneously portrayed as helpless victims and arbiters of immorality, but I wish Prescott had let her work speak for itself more. A layered piece about a divisive topic, ‘Really Good Exposure’ offers a night of thought-provoking entertainment.

 



REALLY GOOD EXPOSURE

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 3rd September 2025

by Lola Stakenburg

Photography by Damian Robertson


 

Recently reviewed at Soho Theatre venues:

JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND: SEX WITH STRANGERS | ★★★★★ | July 2025
ALEX KEALY: THE FEAR | ★★★★ | June 2025
KIERAN HODGSON: VOICE OF AMERICA | ★★★★★ | June 2025
HOUSE OF LIFE | ★★★★★ | May 2025
JORDAN GRAY: IS THAT A C*CK IN YOUR POCKET, OR ARE YOU JUST HERE TO KILL ME? | ★★★★★ | May 2025
WHAT IF THEY ATE THE BABY? | ★★★★★ | March 2025

 

 

REALLY GOOD EXPOSURE

REALLY GOOD EXPOSURE

REALLY GOOD EXPOSURE

ROTUS

★★★★

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Reviews, , , , , ,

ROTUS

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★★

“a sharp, biting, and brilliantly political work—a masterful piece of writing”

A small stage. Did I say small? I mean, broom-cupboard small. Just enough room for one desk, a chair, and a few feet to shuffle around. The venue itself is comically cramped, barely a theatre, more an overstuffed waiting room. Yet the performance triumphs.

Enter Chastity Quirk (Leigh Douglas). Yes, Quirk. And yes, she is quirky. Warm, smiley, inviting — but in that sugary, saccharine way that makes your teeth ache. There’s a voice-over. A delightful interplay of switching characters and voiceover with internal monologue. A receptionist becomes the heart of power, the pretty face behind the ugly truths.

Quirk tells us she’s a people person. She makes people comfortable, unthreatened. Her mother was a hairdresser, she says, and taught her the sacred art of listening — learning other people’s secrets while filing them neatly away like highlights and perms.

Chastity is the ROTUS: Receptionist of the United States. But she’s more than that. She’s an administrative assistant, which in political terms means she’s the machine that makes the machine work. The gatherer of information. The oil in the cogs. The one who makes things happen.

She’s giving a tour to her former sorority sisters — Kappa Gamma Zeta — a chapter that adores her. She also happens to have 300,000 followers for her hair tips. An influencer turned political thought leader—a woman who can sell conditioner and foreign policy in the same breath.

“Do you know how hard it is to get a whole sorority chapter of women to love you all at once?” she asks.

Her boss is President Drumph. And the thing about receptionists? People say anything in front of them. She catalogues disloyalty with the precision of MI5. She’s sugary sweet to her sorority sisters, but she’s merciless to the deranged Speaker of the House.

In an hour, we get a fully fleshed-out Ruth Draper-esque portrait. Leigh Douglas gives us a woman painted in bold strokes, the female characters full of colour and voice, the men flatter, thinner, almost ghosted. Douglas as Chastity dominates the space — blonde locks, West Coast vocal fry, and a smile that could topple cabinets.

That said, the transitions need tightening. The quick shifts from one character to another sometimes feel clunky — all noisy heel-strikes on the floor instead of seamless transformation. But there are flashes of physical brilliance: Chastity sprawled across the desk, one leg elegantly extended into the air, a picture of power masquerading as passivity.

Politically, ROTUS lands hard. It shows us that in the Republican world of patriotic patriarchy, women are essential — whether at the podium or the back office, burning secret files. It’s the pretty that powers the ugly machine—the pretty one who does the ugly work. The Go-To Girls who resist looking thirty, resist looking like lesbians, resist looking like Democrats.

By the end, Chastity is caught in the machinery herself. Other women are blamed, shamed, and maimed. She must choose: follow orders or follow conscience. The character named Liberty provides no liberty. The God-and-Party she serves asks if she’ll take the bullet for them. And Chastity — once the girl with all the privilege — realises she never truly had it at all.

Leigh Douglas’s solo written and acted work, ROTUS: Receptionist of the United States, is a sharp, biting, and brilliantly political work—a masterful piece of writing.



ROTUS

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Reviewed on 21st August 2025 at Snug at Gilded Balloon Patter House

by Louis Kavouras

Photography by Damian Robertson

 

 

 

 

 

ROTUS

ROTUS

ROTUS