As I flicked through the programme in the minutes before The One Woman Plays began, looking for mention of moments to look forward to in the performance ahead, I was instead reliably informed by director Katherine Alcock's introduction that 'THE EXTRACTS PROVIDED DO NOT DO FULL JUSTICE TO WESKER'S WORK'. To all future Wesker directors: this is not what an audience wants to see when it sits down to see full justice done to Wesker's work, and pays for the privilege. Perhaps Varsity should have approached Alcock herself about writing this review.

This performance takes four of Wesker’s One Woman Plays from the original six. Each is a short monologue, written to voice the circumstances of various women. The decision to separate the four monologues of Four Portraits – of Mothers, originally written for a single actress, proved a rewarding one. Rosalie Hayes’ take on Miriam outshone not only her fellow mothers but the rest of the cast as well. Her presentation of an anxious mother’s guilt for the way she raised her children was all the more engaging for its spontaneity, as if she were piecing together her past as much for the audience’s benefit as her own. With each repetition, the fragments she recycles from the rest of her lines become increasingly poignant, rather than redundant, and each is delivered with a focused chaos.

Most of the other monologues were disappointingly lacking in this subtlety. Stephanie Aspin jumped a little too readily between the understated melancholy and more candid bitterness of a wife abandoned by her husband, though she thrived at the threshold of control over her character’s reflections, barely holding back the tears; and Hannah Miller’s proud housewife overlooked the obvious cracks in her own character, despite a witty performance. Juliette Burton is brave to take on the frank ‘Annie Wobbler’, suspenders and all, but the intellectual prowess she is so anxious to prove - honed in her success as a student of French - is left wanting by poor pronunciation.

Frustratingly however, the undisputed star of One Woman Plays was the elusive ‘He’. With the puzzling exception of Charlie Fleming’s novelist, these performances showcased a string of women utterly dependant on men - their sons, lovers and husbands past or present. This entirely female cast and production team waste their admirable determination to represent ‘Cambridge’s best female actors’ on a conservative script of stereotypes.