Review: KAREN at The Other Palace, London

 


Date: 20th March 2024

Seat: Unallocated - Studio Floor

Tickets: Gifted

Rating: 4 Stars

A woman enjoying a Calippo stands on a stage. It sounds like the beginning of a long-winded joke, but it’s actually the start of Karen, a one-woman play by Sarah Cameron-West (who also stars), and she doesn’t enjoy that Calippo for long because her boyfriend, Joe, dumps her. On a day out at Alton Towers. On her 30th birthday. Not quite the surprise she was hoping for, especially as she had her nails done in I Do Pink because she thought she was going to be getting a ring. 

Of course, this is all Karen’s doing. Or so the protagonist (she’s so angry at everyone that she never actually gives us her name) thinks. After all, Karen is her ultimate nemesis at work, and since the three of them work in the same office, why wouldn’t it be Karen that Joe is having an affair with? And the thing is, our protagonist hits the nail right on the head. 

Over the next hour or so, Sarah Cameron-West, beautifully directed by Evie Ayres-Townshend, takes us through the fall-out of her break-up, and she does it with some truly hilarious one-liners, brilliant asides to the audience, and a feeling that she could be any one of us when it comes down to it. 


Phot credit: Dylan Woodley


One of the cleverest elements of Karen is that despite Cameron-West being the only performer, we can very clearly imagine everyone else, from Tony the boss to Stacey the best friend to Joe the ex and, of course, the eponymous Karen herself. Rather than trying to be all those characters, Cameron-West sticks to just the one, and the audience hears one-sided conversations (including a suddenly rather emotional one with her mother) that are so well crafted and performed that it’s as though the other person is there. This is all achieved with some brutal fourth wall-breaking that will draw you into the story and ensure you want to know what happens next. And you’ll be on the protagonist’s side while it all unfolds. 

Sarah Cameron-West took a moment to thank her creative team while the audience was celebrating her achievement with a very long and very rapturous round of applause, and they absolutely deserve that praise. Lighting designer Oliver McNally creates a dual world, with some furious flashes of red and sudden dips into darkness that take us from reality into the protagonist’s mind as she thinks of the things she should have said and wished she had. And Sarah Spencer’s sound design adds another layer, placing the audience perfectly where they need to be and making the whole thing seem much more real as a result. 


Photo credit: Dylan Woodley


Karen manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and perfectly poignant, and by the time it’s over, you feel as cleansed and new as the protagonist, ready to face the world’s Karens and come out victorious on the other side. 

Karen plays at The Other Palace Studio until 24th March: https://theotherpalace.co.uk/karen/ and then at the Edinburgh Fringe on selected dates in August: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/karen

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