Licensed. Professional. Trained. Qualified. is wild, grotesque, dark, deep and laugh-out-loud hilarious. Alice Cockayne is a powerhouse, embodying six outrageous female alter egos, each with jobs typically associated with women. Through them, she dives headfirst into female fears and desires, pulling the audience into a world that feels both absurdly exaggerated and disturbingly familiar.
The production itself is super slick and imaginative. Costume changes are covered seamlessly with witty interludes: wigs mounted on the back wall spring to life, performing brief telephone-call sketches that keep the momentum rolling. Even Cockayne’s entrance is striking — beginning in the office of the escort service Girls4U, she puppeteers wigs on Styrofoam heads to represent sex workers, camouflaging her own head among them before revealing herself. This segment offers some of the darkest comedy of the evening, particularly when three men from the audience are pulled up to dance with the wig-puppets. It’s strangely joyful while being brutally honest about the objectification at the core of one of the world’s oldest professions.
Across the show, Cockayne explodes familiar archetypes. There’s a “mother” character, Penelope Pendlewitch, with a false belly and an impossible horde of 556 children – a grotesque magnification of the desire to reproduce. Another character embodies the pursuit of beauty: a long-nailed femme fatale who glides in, chanting, “beautiful lady coming through,” with a softness so exaggerated it’s haunting. Cockayne constantly cuts through these surreal figures with fourth-wall breaks, reminding us, “don’t be scared, it’s just a character.” These moments land hilariously while also probing why a “character” can feel unsettling, as a distorted collection of real human traits expanded to freakish proportions.
Some of the strongest laughs come from the cleaner character Jeanie McNelson, “The Woman with a Broken Neck,” who begins by flicking the lights on and off as if testing the logistics of her cleaning job. She then proceeds to “clean” the audience, joking with one man about his dyed hair: “That’s natural, it won’t wash out, will it?” At this point, the show hits its stride, and every line has the room in stitches.
McNelson also feels like the most true-to-life character, where the surrealism is anchored in something recognisable. It’s when Cockayne’s creations have this kind of grounding that the show is at its funniest. The Cook, too, is a highlight — cobbling together a casserole from bizarre props and breezing past the audience with half-hearted attempts at small talk. She hilariously brushes someone off after asking their star sign: “We definitely won’t get on.” It’s a brilliant imitation of conversation with someone who really doesn’t care about what you have to say.
When the observational edge slips, a few moments don’t quite reach the heights of the show’s best. The Madam of the Girls4U escort agency carries thematic weight, but her characterisation feels thinner than the others. Segments like this would benefit from a sharper script to match the brilliance elsewhere. Still, Cockayne’s whirlwind energy more than makes up for it. Each time a character exits, we can’t wait to see who will storm on next. This is the kind of comedy that feels made for the theatre — exhilarating simply because you’re there in the room with her.
Written by: Alice Cockayne
Directed by: Jonathan Oldfeild
Published with The Reviews Hub
Rosie Wood 
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