Fly Trap. Barons Court Theatre.

Maria Mainelli’s kind, engaging 40-minute biographical comic monologue takes us on a journey from high school angst to gloomy mid-20s body dysmorphia, to redemption through writing and storytelling. Her task, near-herculean as it turns out, is to find a way to like herself. This is an immensely likeable performance from a talented, committed, and sincere performer, so job mostly done, one hopes.

“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”, Mainelli’s much-loved grandmother tells her as a child, alongside advice on how to win at Candy Crush. Grandma means that if you are nice to people, they will usually be nice to you in return. Bright, creative, and mostly friendless, middle-school Mainelli takes the advice to heart. Niceness pours out of her, relentlessly, like a tsunami of cloyingly sweet syrup.

Mainelli is nice to her schoolmates, but the longed-for invitation to the local pool party never arrives, even though she has an entire list of “conversation starters” memorised. She is nice to boys, but the only interest she gets in return is from “Ryan, the bra-strap strapper”. She is nice enough to play truth or dare with an odious bunch of high school bullies, with disastrous results that include a mouthful of armpit hair.

Later, Mainelli is nice to her college musical theatre teacher, who responds with a caustic category of complaints about her physical appearance. She is nice to the bar’s patrons, one of whom responds by telling her, in essence, to get a life. Reserves of niceness more or less used up, she discovers comic writing and pens a world where, finally, people like her.

Mainelli’s point is that others will not like you unless you like yourself: you need to drain the vinegar from your inner self. It is a point well made in a show that is by turns comic, confessional, and cathartic.

Writer and Director: Maria Mainelli