FringeReview UK 2025

Wyld Woman: The Legend of Shy Girl

Southwark Playhouse and Catherine Schreiber

Genre: American Theater, Biographical Drama, Comedy, Contemporary, Fringe Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: Southwark Playhouse Little Studio, Borough

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“I need to shape the Play Dough of my life.” Though even the title hides as a subtitle, ‘Shy Girl’ comes with the misleading prefix Wyld Woman: The Legend of Shy Girl. Wyld Woman is the brand name of Shy Girls pussy-affirming sex therapist in Isabel Renner’s one woman show featuring herself, stylishly directed by Cameron King at Southwark’s Borough Little till November 15. After an acclaimed development production at Edinburgh Fringe run it’s as now fully fledged as any flamingo.

That’s because for a shy girl Lucy Fowler’s pink set and costumes are the loudest pink invasion you’ll see before Christmas, lit by Catja Hamilton (who packs some blue light surprises). The multiple arrangements amply fill out an L-shaped flat with walls and exits as well as place audience members at a table. Balloons and other tables spill out into seating areas of the Borough with cut-outs of Renner and even more glitter curtains and balloons. My purchase of pink lemonade beforehand was purely subliminal.

Though like everyone else I clearly get into the 70-minute party. There’s audience name recognition and a bit of participation. If you’re lucky you get a badge with ‘Legend’ attached. Be prepared. Sasha Howe’s sound design pumps out standards (and voices, including Renner’s) outrageously wide of Shy Girls feelings.

It’s altogether a loud setting for a quiet girl, and the laughter often comes raucously too. Shy Girl is often very funny indeed, riffing on social anxiety and cringe moments. Renner’s a New Yorker and her altered ego (she states emphatically this isn’t autobiographical, but then on a video sort of does!) works as a waitress at a French restaurant. It’s where her inability to articulate specials that means David Attenborough will never return. Allegedly. The place seems full of British stars and manager Patrice considers her future. It’s not rosy. Or even pink.

Indeed within Shy Girl’s voice Renner insinuates various people including the unpleasant Patrice. There’s narcissistic Pino with his Great American novel (currently a list of his water intake) whom she crushes on. There’s flatmate Memphis: confident, sexually active and at least indulging Shy Girl with a shot or three of vodka. And Shelley her child therapist. Literally. Shelley is six and Shy Girl babysits. But Shelley offers all kinds of advice. For the rest she goes to Wyld Woman who tells her she’s equipped with a quarter-Portuguese vagina. There’s a lot more of that.

Renner with her excruciating cringe of Shy Girl voice is both appealing and warm, delivering squirm and what might be squirmingly embarrassing situations with appeal, aplomb and a kind of apple pie cool. If Shy Girl possessed any. The ritual of a shy day, the favourite song from My Fair Lady seems from a different time. There’s a sweetness and total lack of experience it might have been poignant to pause over.

Beyond Shy Girl’s flatmate and babysit therapist we discover the wannabe Pino talking out of the corner of his mouth, if it’s that orifice. Accepting Shy Girl’s gawky advances he proves a ludicrously inept lover with his “robotic” fingers – this isn’t a family show and Renner’s creation is disarmingly frank and uproariously demonstrative.

But something’s wrong beyond confusing “I’m a vegan/virgin” as a German therapist points out. How could a waitress afford one? But how to lose one’s virginity because it’s really slowing your sex life?

The showstopper is a blow job for which Shy Girl dons a complete ballet outfit (the tutu literally descends) as she pirouettes the Swan with Tchaikovsky’s great climax and dying fall. It’s the funniest moment of a very funny show. But there’s even more touching ones that linger more. Even Pino has his decent limits. And when Shy Girl is humiliated at a restaurant her nadir is nigh.

There is a however a British (who else?) rock star and a bunch of those Legends who might have other ideas.

The only caveat is how the show ends, perhaps with no great reveal or psychological epiphany; perhaps the affirmation seems a bit perfunctory. Shy Girl and Renner don’t really question the conditions that make life this difficult. Not so much the system (that’s rightly well outside this show) but a self-awareness seems kookied out; the heart perhaps of loneliness.

Renner is continually upbeat and consummate at delivering this kind of writing, with tweaks of pathos and sadness. She’s taken in the interactive element that several Stateside one-person shows have brought over recently; though it’s relatively restrained, with much work by Renner to name-check audience-members who’ve written their names.

Forget the wild, even in a tutu. Simply The Legend of Shy Girl is a much better, more relatable title. Renner’s elsewhere a superb, energised performer with inventive ways to portray moments of humiliating intimacy. It would be wrong to wrench this show into another realm. It’s just I’d like to see a little more of Shy Girl’s heart. Even if she does (hilariously) keep confusing its place with somewhere else. To my surprise then I find the show emotionally reticent. It’s the difference between going naked and posing nude. Renner’s been courageous and uses humour to say the often unsayable, but the end jumps clear from what you feel the truth is.

Nevertheless, Renner ‘s next show is eagerly awaited – she’s a superb writer with a cuttingly poetic shorthand, flaring into metaphors. She’s to a degree addressed what the poet Andrew Marvell once described himself doing, near the end of his life: “to dissect oneself, and read the anatomy lesson.” Renner though would spin that into a joke. Producer Catherine Schreiber has done Renner and everyone involved proud, for a show of this brevity sand punch. And for Renner’s witty one-liners, clown-killer script, production values and above all her own performance, this show ends up highly recommended.

Producer Catherine Schreiber, UK Stage Manager April Johnson, General Management RJG Productions Limited, Social.Media Management Content Bestie, Social Media Ad Manager Becca Pratt, PR Emma Beege Möbius PR.

Artwork Ben Blaustein, Rehearsal Photography Erin Pearlman, Production Photography Charlie Lyne, Rehearsal Videography Jaime Valles, Production Videography Pip Films.

Production Electrician Ryan Windscheffel, UK Set Construction Mawford Arts, Lighting Hires White Light, Sound Hires Show Works.

Published November 5, 2025 by Simon Jenner