JANUARY is an apt time to see a play about the evils of self-help books and new year's resolutions.

So Life Shop Till You Drop, a onewoman show that casts a satirical eye over one year in the life of single thirtysomething Ailish McGovern (played by Clodagh Reid), is a salutory lesson in what not to read.

McGovern has vowed 2007 will be the year she finds love, a promotion and ultimately happiness.

Armed with nine of the best-selling self-help books on the market, she aims high - to be branch manager of her recruitment agency, get married and win the Irish Tatler Woman of the Year award.

Writer and director Alice Coghlan's clever script and pitchperfect self-help jargon are a delight, illustrating colourfully how we unconsciously use these phrases in our everyday home and work life.

There are funny portrayals of desperate singletons, with Ailish coming off like a manic Bridget Jones (scary thought), taking 'Me Days' off work so she can do some 'motivational crying'.

Amidst the laughs, Coghlan makes the more serious point that most of the advice in these self-help books is rubbish - and in the case of Ailish can do more harm than good. But she's also pointing an accusatory finger at wider society. It's not just the pop psychologists who are to blame for young women's unhappiness with the single life but the "singles police" too - the mothers and married siblings who put pressure on those longing to find a soulmate, not to mention the modern-day pressure society puts on women to 'have it all':

husband, children, career, oh, and that Woman of the Year Award .

This is a comic satire however and there are plenty of laughs, such as when Ailish finds out the man she is seeing is married with a child. Her sister tells her, "You're just like that book mam got us for Christmas - you're a woman who loves too much."

A few fluffs due to second-day nerves were nothing too serious and certainly nothing to ruin the overall show. There was even an entertaining moment when a large bride's veil conspired against Clodagh Reid and as the audience tried to contain its titters she ad-libbed her way out of it admirably.

Underneath the laughs though, Alice Coghlan questions whether the self-help industry has helped us or whether it has actually duped us into creating neuroses that were never there in the first place, putting off the men that may otherwise have been interested in us. . . and quite possibly ruining our chances at happiness.