Yolanda Mercy’s Failure Project is a sharp, cathartic and touching story of a woman who just can’t seem to catch a break – professionally, personally or creatively. It’s a sobering reflection of the theatre industry for emerging and mid-career writers, and the realities that face anyone trying to forge a career in the arts.
The story follows a 33-year-old playwright, Ade, who is commissioned by a London theatre to write a script about her time on a scholarship at a posh private school. Over six months, her story is distorted beyond recognition by a production team that sidelines her as soon as the script is done. She is dismissed as an actor, interrupted and ignored. Still, the commission stands. To the outside world, Ade is a success.
Mercy digs into failure in every facet of Ade’s life, especially in asking what different kinds of failure can look and feel like in the arts. When the commissioned play starts to spin out of control, Ade approaches a production company with a new idea – a Black scientist facing an ethical dilemma at work. It is flattened. Instead, she is asked to tell the story of a twelve-year-old Nigerian boy’s death in London. Mercy’s portrayal of trauma and its commodification is horrifying. The silence following an easy-breezy producer’s description of the idea over Skype is one of the most awful moments in the play.
The show beautifully intertwines failure and grief – both in the ways that failure can feel like a kind of grief, over your dreams or your ex-boyfriend or your parents’ approval, but also how the death of loved ones can feel like a kind of failure. Overshadowing everything in Ade’s life is the death of her best friend Toby, who she still calls every day, just to leave a message. Her habit of calling him becomes a reason for her parents to suggest she starts therapy. Her grief becomes part of her failure.
What makes Ade’s feelings of inadequacy so visceral is her yearning to succeed “for them”. She must keep going, because her successes and failures are bigger than herself – she has to represent. There’s something generational about it; an image of Ade admiring her mother’s ability to be at peace with herself while she does laundry has really stuck with me. Mercy’s performance is honest, hilarious and sharply in tune with the room. Her ability to get the audience onside is astonishing; some of the jokes feel closer to crowd work than anything scripted. The story unspools effortlessly, dancing from scene to scene – her writing never says more than it needs to, and the pacing is gorgeous.
Failure Project is an astute meditation on grief, resilience and what it means to be heard. Yolanda Mercy excels as both writer and performer, unafraid to tackle the messiness of the theatre industry head-on, whilst never losing a twinkly-eyed sense of humour. It’s a reminder to us all to keep going, no matter what life throws at us.
Playing until 14th June, https://sohotheatre.com/events/failure-project/
Reviewer: Holly Sewell
Reviewed: 29th May 2025
North West End UK Rating: