Regret Me Not

Unnervingly spot-on, unsettling funny, Andrea Donovan unveils a gallery of characters that are each assertive in their own way, yet each with a regret. And although at first sight they mostly appear to be responsible members of society, they are uniformly loonies after you’ve peeled away the external layers of respectability.

Hailing from the north-east is the lady whose life classes are punctuated by her trusty flip chart, strewn with aphorisms, truisms and gloriously meaningless slogans. Her malapropisms, largely sexual, hint of disappointments at odds with this otherwise straitlaced middle-aged guru of personal confidence.

Next up is the posh twenty-something whose clipped tones and breathy delivery are straight out of the pages of Hello! magazine, while her reminiscences of teenage exploits and derring-do are plucked from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, just darker.

An Antipodean swimming instructress then bounds on. Ponytailed, tracksuited and surgically attached to her clipboard, she harangues a group of lazy sixth-formers over a recent unfortunate accident until she’s shouting madly out of the back of the venue at misbehaving youngsters in the distance.

The Scottish single mother with older kids lets us into the minutiae of her “restricted lifestyle” and sadly recalls her gameful attempts to keep up with her more outgoing mates. The mood darkens with the Midlands librarian whose low-level OCD is painfully at odds with her cheery efforts to pass an interview to adopt a child. Oh, let’s not forget the American of a certain age who successfully blends a refuge for prairie dogs with balletic yoga while yearning for a dancing career that never was.

Subtly observed, at times scary and always deliciously loopy, Donovan’s portraits reveal not only a consummate comic actor, but also an enviable writing talent.