The monologues are so strident and screechy, this play is as close to an impossible watch as I can remember in decades. Behind the gauze, Claire as Madame, bullies and is unspeakable towards the sister playing the maid.  Wearing Madame’s designer red frock with its exaggerated hip bustles, Claire films herself on a mobile phone using a filter to enhance her facial features, her eyes overly large and a bright colour, her nose refined and her lips red, swollen and huge as if stung by a flight of bees. 

I found myself thinking about the recent pictures of the American AI actress, although the supposed enhancement here is so over the top as to be ugly.  Pretending to be Claire, Solange bites back and her phone screen image is aged to make her twice her age, her teeth loosened and oversized and falling out.  I wondered if this is what AI will do to live theatre.

Using the phone transformation, Solange becomes the handsome man who is Madame’s boyfriend, in court accused of fraud.