Promoting dyke sex?  
Marcel Wiel finds out how lesbian sex helped Beverley find happiness.

After a string of successes, Natasha Langridge's 'Beverley - A One Woman Oddity' is another winner for the Tristan Bates Theatre.

Actress Valerie Frances plays the heterosexual Lorraine Chase-type talking head, who tel[s us of the sexual ups and downs of her boozy, druggy life. She, She can 'buy her own kitchen', but is surrounded by envy at work and promising yet unsatisfying lovers in bed.

Beverley, Gilded Balloon (Edinburgh Fringe Festival).

STARTLINGLY portrayed by Valerie Frances, an unfeasibly tall actress with the ultra-lean skyscraper frame of a predatory supermodel, Beverley is a mini-skirted Cockney sex- addict, thrill-seeker and drug-freak. More to the point, the apparently street- wise Beverley is also a terminally insecure seeker- after-permanent-love, a young woman entirely devoted to seeking to gauge her own worth in her reflection in mens’ eves.

Beverley - Tristan Bates Theatre (Fringe)

Although its described on the flyer as a 'one-woman oddity', Natasha Langridge's pert monologue isn't that unusual. Like many other plays about women, it depicts a twentysomething longing for love, respect and a wonderful kitchen, who inevitably dates the wrong boy and suffers disproportionately for it.

Where it does differ from the average feminist play is in lewd detail. 'Beverley' is about as close to pornography as theatre am get without breaking any obscenity laws.