In Boots, Astrid is waiting for the morning after pill. Joined by her friends Sonia and Harry, and under the disapproving eye of the pharmacist, they navigate their different attitudes to sex, virginity and contraception. Astrid seems self-assured, but why is she accepting men’s feeble reasons for wanting unprotected sex? Sonia is horrified by her friend’s behaviour but is suspiciously naïve, whilst Harry remains a virgin despite being a star of the footie team.

Astrid is at the character around whom the others orbit, and Iris Hedley’s presence and control brings a calmness to the centre of the maelstrom. The uptight Sonia (Natalie Urusov) could be a great foil for her, but her hectoring criticism of her best friend for having unprotected sex almost encourages us to side with Astrid despite her weak excuses. Matthew Clegg’s bumbling Harry is funny as a caricature, but we only get the merest glimmers of a sensitive side that might make him more sympathetic. The pace is frenetic, and too much hamming it up for laughs leaves no room to feel much sympathy for the characters’ predicaments.

Where the over-the top performances work better are the judgemental pharmacist Joan, a great comic turn by Aubrey McCance, and the uber-confident frenemy Hannah (Liv Douglas), both of whom pop up to exacerbate and act as projections of the shame and embarrassment felt by the three friends.

The disappointment is that the inability to dial down the performances at times unbalances the play. Virginity is treated as something to be embarrassed about, and while Sonia and Harry’s fumbling towards each other is funny, it lacks the tenderness that would take the play to another dimension. Yet Loulou Sloss’s script is well-written and the performances are genuinely funny, with some great set-pieces bringing peals of laughter from an appreciative audience for a play that perhaps has more potential to unpack.