Review: TAKE IT AWAY, CHERYL, Greenside @ Infirmary Street

The art of caring is central to this short and darkly comic one-woman show. Cheryl works at a carnival kissing booth that offers listening rather than smooches. Delightful and ingratiating, she offers her ear to people's problems.

Performing from an ADORABLE little booth of eclectic knick-knacks (I spent quite a lot of time trying to read the label on a tiny, tiny can of soup), Kait Warner, with her smile as wide as the Royal Mile is long, is the actor equivalent of a pressure-cooker. Cheryl's desperation to right the wrongs in her personal relationships is made painfully evident through Warner's tense portrayal of her neuroses. As the narrative grows, the emotions Cheryl had kept long hidden threaten to burst their banks. When they do, she gets a little more than she bargained for and is confronted with her ancestors in quite an invasive way. Warner handles this with first-rate hilarity.

The show is heavily reliant on the audio which represents other characters, which is an effective way of bringing in other characters but slows down the on-stage action a little at moments.

However, running at just 50-minutes, Take it Away, Cheryl is a pocket-sized wonder.