SPLIT ENDS

Bewley's Cafe Theatre
★ ★ ★
One of the tests of womanhood is to master the art of conversing nonchalantly into a mirror, wrapped in a black shroud, with water dripping down your neck. In her debut solo show as writer and performer, Lauren Larkin seizes the comic potential of the hairdressing salon, shaping its intimacies and confessions into a mini-portrait of four generations of Dublin women.

Rotating between the roles of three regular clients and Amy the hairdresser, Larkin builds up insights into their lives. From the older woman whose adult son has died, to the harassed solicitor coping with her mother’s dementia, their outpourings into the mirror are filtered through Amy’s determination to conceive a child.

While Larkin the playwright has taken on a few issues too many – infertility, pressured parenthood, the sexualisation of young women, elderly loneliness – Larkin the performer’s deft comic timing brushes away the split ends.

Runs until Saturday, September 22nd