In The Unicorn, a darkly comic and mesmerising one-woman play by Sam Potter, we meet Andrea, a depressed twentysomething woman teetering on the edge of a breakdown. After complaining about the sexual advances of her colleague, Andrea has been let go from her job - with a significant fifteen thousand pound payout.
She tries job hunting and buying a metaphorical orchid plant, and hooking up with her ex, who has clearly moved on. It’s not until she starts having one-night stands that she feels herself coming back to life. It’s through one of these hookups she discovers sex parties, then sex clubs, and dabbles in polyamory - in the poly community, the term ‘unicorn’ (ie, rare and horny) refers to a single woman who hooks up with couples. Unicorns are often put on a pedestal, rare and unthreatening in a sea of curious, complicated couples.
In short: it’s very easy for Andrea, a single bisexual woman with a sky-high sex drive, to find people to fulfil her desires. Initially, this seems to provide a genuine sense of solace and a much-needed emotional outlet for Andrea. But, much like alcoholics don’t drink because they love the taste of alcohol, Andrea’s sex life quickly becomes about an insatiable desire for oblivion more than pleasure or fulfilment.
This takes a somewhat literal turn, as Andrea finds herself fainting when she becomes overwhelmed by sensation, and this quickly becomes an objective for every encounter, one she reinforces with breath play (a kink activity involving restriction of oxygen, in Andrea’s case, until she passes out). It’s harrowing to watch at times.
As Andrea, Alice Lamb is simply astounding. This is the rare one-act, one-actor, one-hour play that feels vast and complete. Lamb inhabits the stage, which is empty except for a small patch of shag carpet - red like an open wound - and creates a series of vivid scenes. She is seriously talented at aping voices - not just accents but whole cadences and verbal tics - and uses a microphone with a voice distorter to transform into several side characters Andrea encounters throughout her journey. This (and the black box studio the piece was performed in) is a wise choice as it keeps us immersed in the immediacy and claustrophobia of Andrea’s mindset: fearless in her escapades because there are things in the quiet of her own mind that are much scarier to face.
Having these characters as just voices also manages to convey a sort of noirish sense of surreality: the happy-go-lucky Italian lover who introduces Andrea to the first initial sex party feels like an almost dreamlike figure, as does her posh, well-meaning but unempathetic friend.
The sex clubs and their inhabitants are neither portrayed as sleazy nor glamorous as a whole, but rather as a diverse group of people and experiences. The show gracefully walks a knife edge: showing a delicate, flawed character who uses reckless sex as an intoxicant, without shaming or pathologizing her for her high sex drive and sexual autonomy.
The show understands the difference between female desire and desirability, and that Andrea’s character is not there to seduce or provoke the audience, but rather take us by the hand and lead us through the agony, ecstasy, and apathy as she’s pulled into the undercurrent of her addiction.
There’s something deeply normal about this character, who starts her monologue to the audience at an eager-to-please rapid-fire pace, like a nervous friend across a pub table. With her soft-spoken, quippy delivery, ponytailed and dressed in jeans, Andrea seems completely, casually real, which further dissolves any sense of boundary between us and her experience.
To reveal whether the show ends happily would be to spoil the plot, but I will say: while distressing at times, it’s not a bleak show. Instead, it’s an intricate, enthralling meditation on trauma and desire. I couldn’t look away.