Lash: A Pulsating New Play About Going Out Out! – Pleasance Courtyard

Boost your adrenaline and immerse yourself in this part gig, part theatrical experience, which proves to be a treat to the senses.

This is storytelling that stirs up memories of long, booze-soaked late-night club shenanigans and regretful drug fueled streams of consciousness. There’s nothing more exhilarating than getting ready to go ‘out out’ on the town after a long, boring, mundane day at work. With the night threatening to go one way, or the other, with the line between reality, drugs, and booze blurring the vision threatening all of the senses, concepts which this unapologetic production thrives on. 

Written and directed by Phillip Stokes the dark and dingy cobbled Bunker One is the perfect setting for this claustrophobic, loud and noisy piece. We’re hitting the town, big style. There’s no getting away from the banging tunes and a host of mad, and annoying, characters which play a part in this entertaining piece of storytelling.

All told through the eyes of our protagonist, Sonny. A northern lad, working class, and beautifully poetic, breathed to life by Jack Stokes, whose energetic portrayal is mesmerising, his pace is unwavering throughout. In yer face, fast, loud, and animated, the performance packs a punch and pulls you in.   

Stiller moments provide flickers of vulnerability, suggesting layers to this loud-mouthed, gobby youth, making out he just lives to have a good time. Whether it’s for the “shits and giggles” or “to forget”, either way if we look beneath, writer Stokes provides a representation of a lost youth, disenfranchised, and fed up in a post Brexit and pandemic world.

Running at various times until 25^th August 2024.

Reviewer: Gill Lewis

Reviewed: 13th August 2024

North West End UK Rating: