It is something when theatregoers do not want to leave the theatre at the final curtain. It means the audience has bonded with the character – portrayed, in the case of Amateur Girl, by a solitary actress. The audience has been taken by the hand and led into the world of the story and, more significantly, into the sanctified space of the mind, heart and soul of Nottingham nurse, Julie.

The highlight of Julie’s life is to go clubbing with the girls or attend a ‘Take That’ concert. Various males come and go: thirty year old Karl when she is eighteen and a few years later, Gary, a married forty two year old. She is groomed, cajoled, challenged, threatened, and at last entrapped in the world of various fantasy personae: Kimberley, Alex, Sam and finally Kendra.  

Dissociation is a theme of Amateur Girl. The extraordinary thing is that I cannot locate the name of the actress. It’s not on the poster, not in the media release, and not on the small card promo at the theatre. I ask the ticketing woman if there is a programme. She says ‘no’. Is this meant to reinforce the anonymity of the main character; is it a metaphor for how Julie, the Nottingham nurse, has her own identity and in the end her own heart and soul obliterated by the exploitation of key men in her life?  

I ring the director of the play. He tells me there is, in fact, a programme and this identifies Nikki Conyers as our sole performer. Amateur Girl asks a lot from her and she is equal to the challenge of engaging, winning over, and retaining the audience for an hour and a half. Changing five times in the course of the production, Nikki handles the varied and demanding segments of the tale with verve and sensitivity. She owns the character and we are with her, willing her to extricate herself from her entrapment. Hope appears in the form of a hospital Matron and Denzel, a security guard, though Julie is unable to recognise this. 

Based on real life stories, this critique of the porn industry reveals the personal cost to vulnerable young women of their sexual, economic and emotional exploitation by manipulative self-serving men.

The intimate nature of the play suits the small intimate feel of the upstairs Gloucester Room at the Isaac Theatre Royal. The production is well directed, the play’s transitions carefully managed and its ‘acts’ punctuated by ‘freezes’, change of lighting and haunting sound effects.

Amateur Girl, starring Nikki Conyers (her fifth outing with A Little Box at the Top of the Stairs), succeeds as a “wry poignant one woman play about the reality behind the fantasy business”.

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