'The personal is political' was the feminist slogan of the seventies, and most one-women shows tended to bang on about the barbarity of men and the trials of motherhood until the arrival in the eighties of apolitical one-womaners likeVictoria Wood. The trouble is, unless a one-woman show can present the political in a really new or compelling way, or has a writer and/or actress as quirky, idiosyncratic and sympathetic as Wood, it always seems a bit pointless you feel that you could do a better one yourself. Joanna Murray-Smith's Bombshells, now playing at the Arts Theatre, manages neither novelty nor quirkiness. In it, the Australian actress Caroline O'Connor takes on a succession of personae, but nothing that any of them say is particularly telling, funny or moving. 
      The show began with a day in the life of a mother of three, a manifesto for the dreariness and demoralization of motherhood. The problem has been presented so often that even the most hardened of men tend to acknowledge its reality, and perhaps there has even been some improvement in their behaviour. The only point in rehashing this tired old subject is to convey it freshly and forcefully, in a way that arouses such sympathy for the particular mother being portrayed that by an effort of imagination it is extended to mothers in general. As it was, the harassed mother Meryl seemed alienatingly boring and self-pitying. 
      Similarly with the subjects of other sketches  it was hard to identify with them as a woman, and to feel sorry for them whatever sex you were. There was an interesting conceit by which a deserted, middle-aged wife delivering a talk to her local society of cactus-growers managed to simultaneously touch on cacti and her relationship with her ex-husband. Plenty of truistic wisdom about love putting down roots after the first surges of passion but somehow nothing to arouse pity and warmth for the suffering Tiggy. 
      The most successful sketch, during which there was a real sense of warmth, pleasure and interaction between character and audience, was that of the Irish schoolgirl Mary entering a talent-show. Caroline O'Connor is a marvelous dancer, and she was able to convey the surprise and spontaneity of a young girl's flair, her energy and chutzpah, far better than the sorrows of her other characters. 
      Of course I can only speak as one woman about this one-woman show  a lot of the audience were laughing and seemed to be enjoying themselves. 
Jane O'Grady