Really Good Exposure – Soho Theatre, London

Megan Prescott’s Really Good Exposure explores toxic beauty standards, the pressures of the entertainment industry, and how to reclaim agency in unexpected ways.

Content/Trigger Warning: NSFW themes including exploitation, nudity, sex work.

Really Good Exposure

As an elder millennial, there was a lot that felt familiar in Megan Prescott’s Really Good Exposure. I watched a fair bit of Skins back in the noughties. I was young(ish), it was “edgy,” and I was living somewhere where most media in English was American and I enjoyed something different. But the other thing that really rang true was the incredibly toxic culture for young women in the nineties/noughties. You didn’t have to be a child actor to be exposed to impossible beauty standards, body shaming, toxic diet culture, and being socialised to put men’s comfort over your own. Being a child actor, though, if this fictionalised version is anything to go by, really didn’t help.

In creating Really Good Exposure, Prescott draws on her own and others’ experiences (link to sources here). The broad strokes feel close to home. A girl with a passion for performance lands “the role of a lifetime” on an edgy teen drama. Sure, she has to do some things that feel uncomfortable, but she wants to prove she’s “mature” and pushes through. After the show ends, Molly (the character) struggles to find work. Agents and casting directors push her further and further past her boundaries while she struggles to pay the rent. The cycle of industry and media exploitation ends somewhere unexpected: with Molly reclaiming some of her power through porn.

On Stage at Soho Theatre

What I find really interesting are the power dynamics. At one point Molly is caught up in an undercover sting at the strip club where she works, the media seizing on the “fallen former actress” story. Megan, on the other hand, has been open about her OnlyFans account, which she set up during the pandemic and which helped fund her first run of Really Good Exposure at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe. In both cases there’s a harnessing of public curiosity about “where are they now?” stories, heightened by the sexual undertone. But in Megan’s case, sharing her story on her own terms has helped her further her career as an actor, writer and director.

The show acknowledges both sides of the feminist debate on sex work – empowerment versus exploitation – but doesn’t try to resolve it (thankfully, given the 70-minute run time). It stays deliberately personal, well-researched, and carefully structured. It’s also shocking and uncomfortable. Prescott is the one calling the shots. Choosing minimal costume and full-frontal nudity, she puts the audience in the role of voyeur. Projections on the back wall (a tabloid countdown to “legal age” or common porn category searches) underline how normalised the sexualisation and objectification of girls and women has become. We can be victims of this culture, but also complicit.

I was reminded of other shows I’ve seen recently (like this) that challenge the need to relive trauma in order to make “serious” theatre. In Really Good Exposure, Prescott adds an important voice to the conversations around safeguarding child actors (and women of all ages), the objectification and sexualisation of women, and sex work as empowerment. She is an engaging, compelling theatremaker. I hope this success also allows her the freedom to move away from past harm in future work, and to explore other stories she wants to tell.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Really Good Exposure on at Soho Theatre until 13 September 2025. More info and tickets here.