According to traditional wisdom, in a life-threatening situation people go into fight or flight mode. Pretty Good Not Bad highlights a third unremarked response: to fawn. The show centres on an aspiring actress, Ellen Toland (played by herself), auditioning for the role of a rape victim in a procedural drama, but halfway through her audition she takes issue with the writing and shares memories of her own attack.

She tells us how her first response was to try and win her attacker over, how she then minimised her pain to the paramedics and police in order to make them more comfortable, and how she changes the telling of her story to best gain approval and sympathy from the listener. Pretty Good Not Bad offers a powerful look at the performativity and people-pleasing that society demands from women.

This story is an important one that will be familiar in some way to many women, but Toland’s performance can sometimes verge on cliché, speaking with the same intonation throughout and ending every line with an unfinished, questioning lilt. Nevertheless, she largely manages to convey the conflict between her character’s sadness and her need to put on a brave, likeable face. 

Pretty Good Not Bad, theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall, until 24 August, 10.45am.