PODCAST REVIEW: SKYLAR.

HALF-EATEN burger blues: ‘Skylar’ is played by Sivan Raphaely. Photograph courtesy inkjockey.co.uk

THE THING ABOUT Skylar, the third monologue in the podcast series The End of the Line, is her fiery youth and her anger. Similar to the situation with Sally, a couple of episodes ago, there isn’t a deep dark reason – or at least one that is extrapolated in this piece – about why she doesn’t want to toe the expected line of a woman of child-bearing age in a conventional western society. Skylar’s perspective on children just is.

The vignette, ably played by Sivan Raphaely, is also very American, in accent, cultural reference and barb-driven humour. This piece doesn’t go beyond the anger Skylar articulates about being left high and dry on a first date because she said something that frightened the young man in question. It’s heavily self-deprecating but also presents a side to this character which is quite self-indulgent.

As you listen to this rant, you have the urge to say, “Get over yourself, lovey. At least you could still get some fun out of the evening,” something along the line of what the waitress in the context whispers in her ear. But she’s too bristling with rage to get that. And she knows that it is not the other potentially deathly boring elements to her life that came up in her conversation with the date in question – like her cats, her therapist or her mother – that were the ‘deal breaker’. It was about her uterus. Or maybe the young man developed explosive diarrhoea. Things happen.

In this, the third work in the series of 12, you may feel that the focus seems to be getting a little tired. But still, there are more, and the crispness of the other two so far have been tantalising. Listen to Skylar here.

• Skylar is written and directed by Mark Heywood and features technical input by Hetty Hodgson. With music by Daisy Chute and Cerian of the Heard Collective, it is performed by Sivan Raphaely and it is the third in a series of podcasts collectively called The End of the Line.