Per-Verse at Riverside Studios: Georgie Wedge Turns Bad Sex Into Great Theatre

Elena Leo is the Arts & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.

If you’ve ever come home from a date, collapsed into your bed (or someone else’s), and thought, “Well, that’ll make a story one day,” then Per-Verse is the show you wish you created — but didn’t. Luckily, Georgie Wedge did it for you.

Fresh from a riotous Edinburgh run and now storming Riverside Studios until 19 April, her one-woman show is a whip-smart, delightfully filthy, and genuinely poetic journey through the highs, lows, and what-the-actual-f*ck moments of modern dating. It’s equal parts stand-up, spoken word, and theatrical therapy — for her issues and, let’s be honest, yours. Remarkably, she’s made them rhyme.

Per-Verse plays out like a night out that escalates – from the bar to the bedroom, with detours for emotional spirals, unsolicited nudes, and the kind of kiss that confirms chemistry was, in fact, a one-sided fantasy. But this isn’t just a Tinder-inspired hour of below-the-belt punchlines. Wedge uses poetry as both armour and ammunition, flipping from flirty wordplay to gut-punch honesty in the space of a line break.

Yes, there are puns. Yes, there’s a brilliant section on sexual health panic that might make you clench in solidarity (shingles, if you must know). And yes, she absolutely goes there — that moment, that awkward tangle of limbs and expectations, that realisation mid-kiss that someone’s idea of foreplay includes interpretive dance and no eye contact.

But the brilliance is in how Wedge refuses to be the punchline. She owns every fumble – not as a cautionary tale, but as a power move. This isn’t sex-positive theatre in theory. It’s a live, sweaty, gorgeously awkward example of a woman writing herself into the narrative with nothing held back (except maybe a name or two – could be for legal reasons).

You might expect bawdy anecdotes and a few ‘haha men are trash’ jabs. But what you get is far more layered – and much better written. Wedge leans into the messy poetry of intimacy, asking what it means to build identity in the mirror of someone else’s bathroom… often while half-naked, wondering where your bra ended up.

There’s structure, too. Each poem ties into a phase of the night and a physical sense — taste, touch, sound — giving the show a satisfyingly theatrical shape. Transitions are smooth, and the pacing is as tight as her metaphors.

Not every beat hits as hard — a couple of spoken word sections feel slightly strained, but that’s small talk. The real takeaway is how rare it is to see a show this bold, funny, and emotionally intelligent — especially in a landscape still weirdly twitchy about women speaking frankly about sex. Let alone laughing about it.

In the end, Per-Verse isn’t really a sex show — it’s poetic therapy about sex. And if that’s not already a genre, it absolutely should be. It’s also a relief to learn her shingles are gone — they did, however, make for a couple of cracking jokes.

Bring a friend. Bring a date. Bring tissues — for the laughing, obviously.