Their meeting place, an ancient Oak tree, all our echoed inner pain, three girls, Zainab the earth, Keira the animal and Lucy, like a cloud with legs. So writes Julia Grogan in the Playfight script notes, which I could hardly just walk past after watching this fire cracker.
Summerhall’s crucible of dreams, the Roundhouse, is a perfect In the round venue for a play about the complexities of girlhood, which twists and turns following three fifteen-year-old school friends who spark off each other in multiple directions. Keira is the adventurous one and has just lost her virginity, on the tennis courts, doggy style, with an eighteen year old. Zainab is coming to terms with the idea that she might prefer girls, and Lucy floats along, struggling to balance her love of the church with her own sexual awakenings.
While Keira has been out clubbing, the other two have been watching David Attenborough on telly, she quips’ Hanging out with you two, I can feel my sperm count dropping’. But Lucy has her own juicy story of what she got up to behind the church on Mothering Sunday.
The dialogue is stunningly and toe-curlingly real, there are more than a few groans of recognition, particularly from the female audience members. It plays out like a hot stream of consciousness, which could go anywhere, which makes it totally believable. Director, Emma Callander squeezes plenty of meaning from the bright pink A-Frame ladder which represents ‘the tree’, which might be interpreted as a sort of unchanging authority figure, seemingly the only static element in all their lives.
This might seem like just your standard coming-of-age melodrama, but it feels richer and more important than that. The cast is terrific, and it is testimony to the quality of the acting that the essential qualities outlined in Grogan’s notes come across so perfectly. Sophie Cox’s Keira is explosive and electric in her vulgarity, but loyal to the core to defend her mates. Nina Cassells nails down Zainab’s confusion but also her hot intellect that ultimately arms her with the essential tools to take on the adult world. But best of all is Lucy Mangan who plays her namesake, at times with the pious pinch-faced certainty of a fully grown Matilda, and at others as though made of air in a wide-eyed otherworldly daze.
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 18th August 2024
North West End UK Rating:
Running time – 1hr