Aideen McQueen’s Lucy invites the audience into her flat to endure the anxious self-reflection that comes while waiting for a situationship to text back. Her red-wine glugging, self-help reading character is an instantly recognisable pastiche of the thirtysomething spinster trope. She has a Carrie Bradshaw-esque tendency to categorise broad swathes of men (either sleazy, creepy or harmless) and vainly obsess over the one she believes is the exception while abandoning the girlfriends closest to her. 

As Lucy continually ignores calls from her best friend Aoife, citing a need to protect her peace, McQueen closely satirises an algorithmic interpretation of self-love that posits interdependence as weakness and tough-love as simply cruel. Ironically, it is this warped vision of self-love that sends Lucy spiralling along her obsessive pursuit of heterosexual love, while remaining blind to the lingering traumas that might explain her singlehood. 

With such well-trodden themes, Waiting For Texto doesn’t always feel particularly fresh, but McQueen’s comedy brings a welcome novelty. Though the delivery feels clunky at times and the occasional technical delay goes awkwardly unfilled, Waiting For Texto remains a comfortingly funny watch that will remind you to text your friend back. For that alone it’s worth seeing. 

Aideen McQueen: Waiting For Texto, Gilded Balloon Patter House, until 25 August, 2.20pm; picture: Steve Ullathorne.