The Girlfriend Experience **** TNT

You wouldn’t normally expect to see the cast wearing headphones in an otherwise naturalistic play, but playwright Alecky Blythe uses the “recorded delivery” technique to let us eavesdrop on a form of prostitution which rarely hits the headlines. From hours of audio material, she has selected a sequence of minor episodes, and the taped words of the women whose world she was allowed to enter are played to the actors who replicate them on stage, complete with all the pauses and repetitions of everyday speech.

I’m not sure that (once the production is rehearsed and ready) this way of working adds much to the experience, but you soon forget the method and ignore the headsets as Tessa (a Gothic ex-dominatrix) and her three co-workers lounge around in her Bournemouth flat, waiting for the next punter to ring the basement doorbell for forty quid’s worth of massage and hand relief, or fork out an extra twenty for half an hour and the full works.

What comes across most in this warm and witty portrayal is the very ordinariness of these self-employed, suburban women who offer a kiss and a cuddle along with gratification, before going home in the evening to take care of an ailing father, a teenage daughter or a husband. Verging on (or well into) middle age, with big boobs and bodies that could at best be described as “comfortable,” they still long for real romance whilst maintaining that what they do is just a job like working in a supermarket.
Debbie Chazen, Beatie Edney, Lu Corfield and Esther Coles give brave, sympathetic performances in their black lingerie and Alex Lowe, always glimpsed through a doorway, manages to invest their clients – the creepy, the sad, the obnoxious and the simply horny – with considerable individuality.

Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, Sloane Square, SW1 (020-7565 5000). October 11. £15 (£10 on Monday)