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Thank You For Calling

Theatre 118, Glasgow

Four stars

 

Meet Alex, the twenty something woman whose entire life is on hold in Larissa Ryan’s solo play. Scratching a living answering calls for a company selling the sort of ideal homes she could never afford, the 3pm till midnight shift suits her ongoing avoidance of the entire human race. Her only interactions come from the after hours freaks and weirdos on the other end of the line who really don’t want whatever it is she’s selling. Alex knows this because they tell her so in graphic terms. 

 

Alex doesn’t hold back either in Ryan’s performance, as she confesses all her troubles while craving some kind of way out. Her sounding board for this comes in the form of a bunny rabbit glove puppet recommended by her therapist. The tough love Alex is harangued with by the bunny recalls the co-dependent sparring dished out in ancient TV routines between ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her similarly sarcastic appendage, Lamb Chop. It is the voices in Alex’s headset, however, that finally get through to her beyond terminal rejection. 

 

First seen in Birmingham prior to a run in San Diego, Jaeonnie Davis-Crawford’s production brings out the light and shade of Ryan’s monologue. She performs this with an off-kilter kookiness and dark edged wit that taps into the everyday absurdity of Alex’s situation while never losing sight of the life and death desperation at stake. 

 

Using the disembodied voices of Alex’s increasingly cranky callers is a neat dramatic trick that adds an eerie displacement to proceedings in a way that recalls the likes of Eric Bogosian’s now classic 1987 play, Talk Radio. Where Bogosian used a late night radio show as his backdrop, Ryan’s more private exchanges explore real life traumas for the post call centre age in a way that makes for something infinitely more intimate. For Alex, the impersonal nature of her callers finally helps her make some kind of connection that even her glove puppet bunny might approve of in a devastating study of how the comfort of strangers can provide some kind of lifeline. 


The Herald, December 2nd 2025

 

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