Touched… Like A Virgin[author-post-rating] (4/5 Stars)

Olivia Lee is enthralling in this coming-of-age play about growing up too late. Zoe Lewis’s perceptive script explores the crisis of a 30-something woman called Lesley, by telescoping through a series of non-chronological monologues, treated as one-way conversations with Madonna, taken from crucial points in her development thus far.

Raucous, rude and revealingly intimate, the monologues feel like stolen snippets from Lesley’s diary. They document a sexual awakening, suitably triggered by Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’ music-video; a disillusioning first time (“It felt lonelier. At least before I had my virginity to talk to”); a surprisingly rewarding tryst with a boss in New York; and an infatuation with the recurring, elusive Andy. Think Adrian Mole, but female.

The disjointed structure gives us a complete picture of Lesley’s character. Note her constantly evolving accent, attitude and aspects of her personality, all notably altered at different ages. At one point a middle-class teen in Manchester, embarrassed to own a semi-detached while everyone else at her state-school lives in council houses, embarrassed by sexual inexperience, embarrassed by her feminist mum. Later she becomes the polar opposite: a privately-educated Oxbridge student and unabashed embarrassment to mum after landing on the front page of The Mirror accompanied by a rugby player’s perineum, juxtaposed against a photo of Emmeline Pankhurst running under the King’s horse.

Despite strong feminist themes running throughout, the show does not posture so much as to be too serious. Although Lesley’s mum often provides the voice of common-sense, being right and being funny are not mutually exclusive, as the teenage Lesley demonstrates: “she (mum) says she doesn’t clean because she believes in equality… well equality is filthy.”

Speaking of filth, the play is loaded with it; it is part of its charm. Lee can be quirky, anxious, warm, gentle and maternal, but she also captures Lesley’s brutal honesty, which makes her seem pathetic at times. She speaks frankly about how an initial fear of semen has succumbed to her lying in a hotel bathroom attempting to inseminate herself with a dribble of it on her thigh. She invites the viewer to judge Lesley, as though the sharing process is a sort of cathartic therapy.

While it is a one-woman show, the role of the musicians is central. A talented cabaret singer (whose vocal performance alone is worth buying a ticket to see) channels Madonna during interludes throughout the performance, while Lee travels between the stage and the blue velvet stools situated around the audience, to a different moment in Lesley’s life. As she does this, she dons or discards an item of clothing to indicate the age she is portraying (a teenager’s pink hoodie, a sophisticated raincoat, etc). Though the set is adorned with four posters of Madonna, Lee directs her attention at the singer who responds with impassiveness (as well Madonna might should she ever be confronted with Lesley’s ramblings).

Whether you love Madonna, despise her, or were too busy wondering why she got off with black Jesus in the ‘Like A Prayer’ video to ever form an opinion on her, you should find the show poignant and hilarious.

Touched… Like A Virgin is playing until 25 August. For more information and tickets, see the Edinburgh Fringe website.