One of the Boys –  Playground Theatre

One of the Boys leads it’s audience through an Indusry-esque exploration of the corporate ‘boys club’ and the women it leaves behind, but with too little nuance or introspection to make for a truly engaging watch.

The play, written by Tim Edge and directed by Lydia McKinley, was a feat of endurance for its cast. Giving 85 minutes of action with no interval, all four of the cast should be praised for the great amount of work they put in to bringing this performance to life. Energy never dropped and the quality of performance was, for the most part, high.

Playing the cold-career-woman turned heart-of-gold lead Eve, Miriam Grace Edwards was a stand-out within the production, bringing nuance and sensitivity to a character which could have easily been reduced to stereotype. Edwards played the character with a heartbreaking honesty which made her triumphant ending one that we could genuinely care about.

A strong performance was also put up by Jess Gough, though she had remarkably little to work with. Her character, Heidi, acted as a young feminist ‘trouble maker’ set to shake up the corporate world of the play by providing something it lacked severely… principle. Gough brought genuine bite with her anger, and great command of a stage. But, ultimately the role was cliched and neither of the women were all that likeable.

For a feminist play, the female characters were both criminally underwritten. It served as a constant reminder that the author of this play is a man.

Matt Ray Brown as the cut-throat boss ‘The Chair’ and Daniel Kendrick as his dutiful gun-dog ‘Kevin’ were thus, unsurprisingly, far more rounded and likeable characters across the breadth of the performance. Both actors played the hedonistic, dirty attitudes of their characters with relish. Kendrick, comedic and charming. Brown, chillingly understated.

Once again, however, a more interesting character study was lost to the intricacies of a script which bit of more than it could chew. Plot lines ran quickly, with obstacles and resolutions created and destroyed at the blink of an eye. This could be a choice, replicating the high-paced world of work it was exploring, but it made for unsatisfying viewing as character developments would be lost at a moment’s notice for the benefit of the confused narrative. The plot, for all its complexities, was familiar. Sex, betrayal, hedonism and competition. Where Edge must be praised on the intricacy of his script, it packed too much into too little time for a story which offered nothing new to the discourse it sought to disrupt.

Staging was strong and the metaphors of surveillance, always being ‘on the clock’ and the brutal work culture all added interesting food for thought to the production, but the direction of the piece at times felt misguided. Repetitive club-music-breaks between scenes were used to bring moments physical theatre from the cast which felt over-done and unnecessary, often curtailing what could have been powerful fringe-theatre into something with the hallmarks of amateur dramatics.

Walking a tightrope to techno did not make for an effective metaphor about work-life balance.

Ultimately, One of the Boys gave an intense display of anger toward patriarchy and the systems which keep it in check. If put in front of the right audience, it could genuinely provoke thought and change.

However, being marketed as delivering something ‘new’ to the discourse, it underdelivered.

One of the Boys runs at The Playground Theatre until 27 October. https://www.theplaygroundtheatre.org.uk/projects/one-of-the-boys

Reviewer: Sadie Pearson

Reviewed: 3^rd October 2024

North West End UK Rating: