To write that Dear Little Loz is an exploration of one woman’s search for love is to risk diminishing its scope, power and understanding of the human condition. For this is no singleton farce of big knickers, amusing incidents with ski lifts, and increasingly deranged machinations to meet 'The One', but a nuanced and incredibly real tale of how one person has come to recognise who they are and the human connection they need to thrive.
Lauren-Nicole Mayes delivers a script as thought-provoking as it is sharp.
It’s Victoria Wood meets Fleabag meets Corrie meets our own best friends, and although redolent with echoes of those female voices who have gone before, always remains entirely authentic. It is rare to meet a piece of new writing which creates a sense of poetic domesticity without plummeting into the sentimental or crashingly dull, but writer / performer Lauren-Nicole Mayes delivers a script as thought-provoking as it is sharp.
Mayes is an endearing stage presence, able to switch between emotional and literal situations with ease, and holding the audience easily in the palm of her manicured hand. But it is the strength and subtlety of her writing and the potency of her linguistic and emotional register which envelopes us all in her search for that most basic need: to be (at least) noticed. There is a significant voice emerging here, whether liberally sprinkling delicious references to 2000s pop culture or trying to persuade herself that the clearly-hopeless Dave might be a ‘keeper’; and one well worth investing in this Fringe.
