Playfight, Soho Theatre
Tuesday 15th April 2025
Coming of age stories are more or less all the same. You start off naive and ignorant, and end up worldly and wise. But what distinguishes Julia Grogan’s Playfight, which was first staged at the Edinburgh Festival last year, and is now at London’s Soho Theatre as part of a national tour, is the sheer energy of the story. This is the kind of new writing that roars on stage, kicks over anything in its way, and fizzes and flares with coruscating wit, lurid imagery and — above all — a real sense of pulsing life. Yes, this is playwriting which slings on a push-up bra, brandishes its fake ID, and then drops its knickers too. It’s both shameless and utterly true.
So what’s it about? Well, it features three schoolgirls in an unnamed West Midlands town, but could be anywhere in the UK today. They are the vulgar and vivacious loudmouth Keira, and her besties Zainab and Lucy. These two are well organized, good students, curious and ambitious, if less sexually experienced than their friend. We first meet all three at age 15, as they stand underneath an old oak tree, gazing at the body of a dead squirrel. As they inspect its inert form, Keira tells them how she lost her virginity, and the play’s themes of sex, love and death are soon in view.
For the next breathless 70 minutes, we watch these three grow up over the span of about a decade, becoming aware of their sexuality and their place in the world. Starting off as schoolkids, with the energy bomb that is Keira dominating their activities, the other two nervously wait for their GCSE exam results, with the church-going Christian Lucy a neat contrast to the less airy Zainab, who is dominated by her mother. Amid the jokes about sex, the exploration of new physical feelings, and the gross moments of truth, Zainab gradually discovers her lesbian desires, and there are some tenderly awkward passages of unrequited love.
But as well as sex, this is a story about death, which begins with a song about graveyards and then hits us twice with the sudden fatalities of young people. Offstage, but present in the minds of Keira, Zainab and Lucy are funerals, commemorative services and unspeakable grief. In the playtext, Grogan makes a reference to the case of Grace Millane, who was strangled to death during casual sex, and whose killer claimed that this was a game of rough sex gone wrong. So, unsurprisingly, Playfight includes references to troubling acts of BDSM, raising issues not only of consent, but also of how some sexual practices grow out of young female psychology — and its exploitation by men.
Although it’s rather a short piece, the play is full of bright moments, some funny, some not, most of which burn into the imagination. These include clit-rubs, tampon jokes, experiences of orgasms, and experiments with drugs. In one episode, gender fluididy quickly winks at the audience. There are quotes from the Bible and from Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. There’s a poem about a tree. Running through all of the pellmell of incidents are the deep feelings of the girls: anguish about exclusion from events shared by others, and sparks of jealousy (yes they fight as well as play), but also with a profound sense of solidarity and, yes, love.
While the lives of Keira, Zainab and Lucy are told in a rapid episodic way, with the effect of explosive if sketchy moments, a real sense of female friendship emerges. And Grogan shows how even the most passionate of teen relationships can cool as lives diverge, as school mates take different paths. Some of the strongest moments involve the way we all sometimes blame or shame others for our own frustrated desires. And central to the play is the image of an old oak tree, the site of young togetherness, a visionary place in nature which is a more powerful symbol of bonding than the school, the church or the workplace.
Emma Callander’s excellent production rings with emotional truth and sparkles with verbal energy. The set, by Hazel Low, features a glowing pink step ladder in place of a naturalistic tree, and the cast turn in super performances: Sophie Cox’s powerhouse Keira is loud and vulgar, but also capable of remorse and loneliness; Lucy Mangan’s Lucy is slightly mysterious and searching, but also painfully unsure of the right path in life; while Nina Cassells’s Zainab is ambitious, clever and critical of bullshit. The result is an edgy, punchy drama that, for all its slenderness, electrifies the senses and engages the feelings. Great new writing deluxe.
This review first appeared on The Theatre Times
- Playfight is at the Soho Theatre until 26 April.
