Theatre review: Lemonade

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Under the golden glow of the dressing room lights, Heather Litteer mooches across the stage in a satin dressing gown, the familiar image of a Hollywood star.

Assembly Rooms (Venue 20)

***

However, like so many other female actors, she’s spent much of her life playing the bit parts of prostitutes, drug addicts and “fallen women”.

Through her biographical one-woman show, Heather pairs descriptions of some of the roles she’s had the “opportunity” to perform (“abused, used to be pretty”) with the grim reality of the sex scenes these often involve.

The wider issues of the sexualisation of women in film and ageism are also touched upon, but skimmed over in favour of an individual story spanning the Go-Go clubs of the 1970s and what sounds like porn in the 1990s.

Heather frequently seems torn between loving and hating the shiny but sexist industry she’s chosen to be a part of – but her touching relationship with her mother is real and heartfelt in comparison.

“When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade,” Heather says, before a brilliantly punk finale. “If there’s one thing I don’t have, it’s the charm to be defeated.”

If you’re a woman in the film industry (or, indeed, any industry), you may well want to print it out and stick it to your wall.

Until 27 August. Today 4:40pm.