Perth Reviews

This show was a very hard ask for McAlinden.

The Leederville Hotel, in an attempt to host several stand up shows each evening, had been divided into 3 upstairs rooms. Each only held about 20 seats and a tiny stage.

The audience of about 14 punters were almost completely unresponsive to her monologue, perhaps because she had plenty to say but her storytelling left much to be desired. She seemed to have one volume of delivery and it was full on with no real need for a microphone. As she explained her background was half English/half Irish and her accent was thick. She also suffered from a lack of timing, tumbling from one story to the next with almost no breaks to allow for audience reaction.

McAlinden began her tale of romantic woe with the alleged Prince Charming breaking up with her at 3.00am in the morning over the phone! After the end of a 7 year relationship she determined to enter therapy to discover “how to date again.”

This gave her plenty of material to work with. Unfortunately her choice of new boyfriend turned out to have multiple issues which she tried to deal with sympathetically. After all, as she noted “happily ever after” is dependent on finding a partner, in her case a man; the ultimate prize. This led to her “kissing a lot of frogs” in an attempt to find the perfect match.

Also to her attempts to accommodate/placate the whims of the said “prince” who turned out to be a “beast”. She thought he was misunderstood, despite the opinions of her girlfriends who dismissed him with “he’s just a frog!” The image is underlined in the visual of McAlinden in front of a cracked mirror reflecting a shattered face.

Alluding to the Hans Christian Anderson story The Little Mermaid, McAlinden revealed the true story of the mermaid who swapped her tail for a pair of legs in order to find a human partner. The sad truth was revealed in which every step she took was like walking on knives and ultimately her death.

The moral seemed to be that it was a fact that “only you can build your own happily ever after”.

A sad premise indeed.

McAlinden shows great promise and is a talented writer, her material was excellent. With work on her timing and, of course further performances, she will go far.