by Diana Miranda
After its Royal Court debut in 2020, Miriam Battye’s Scenes with Girls returns with renewed energy, this time produced by T. Regina Theatre Company. Battye’s dramedy explores a female friendship showcased in all its chaotic yet beautiful glory. We might be used to either Mean Girls venom or sanitised sisterhood-power tales, but here, Battye offers something far more authentic: two young women who are sometimes gentle, sometimes petty, and always human.
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Photo by Rachel Burnham
By Luisa De la Concha Montes
My Plan for Tomorrow follows Piers (Alfie-Lanham Brown), a frustrated character who wanted to be a writer, but didn’t get into Oxford, so now he splits his time between delivering job-hunting masterclasses, attending comic-con conventions and telling people how great his (unfinished) novel is. When he runs into an old acquaintance from university, Tomas (Chris Capon), Piers becomes obsessed, as Tomas represents everything Piers wishes he could have been: a successful comic illustrator with a big following.
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by Diana Miranda
Who needs another romance song? The question is potentially dangerous, considering that Swifties are pouring out from every crevice in London towards Wembley Stadium this weekend. But after a successful run at Brighton Fringe, Isabel Songer has no fear of bringing up the matter in her solo piece, Flat 4. Following a young woman stepping into the world of independence, this drama offers a peek into the joy and complexities we may find not in a partner, but in friendship.
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by Laura Kressly
Best friends Noa and Nina are 17 and have the world at their feet. They are bright, articulate, young women with busy, privileged lives. Despite this, they agonise over the possibility of the world passing them by and whether or not they might actually be quite boring. To manage their worries, they project them – and their queerness – onto a high-conflict romance of their own creation. Set on a contemporary American ranch, scenes from their heightened fiction intersect with the real in entertaining and touching ways.
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by Diana Miranda
A darkly humorous play about influencer culture in the AI age, Racheal Ofori’s FLIP! is a witty two-hander that follows the journey of friends Carleen and Crystal, popular co-vloggers who go above and beyond for online fame. After a few hit-and-miss attempts, Carleen starts producing content with FLIP, a new social media platform that utilises advanced AI. The fun satire takes a dark turn, and what follows is an exploration of the lengths people may go to craft an identity appealing to the masses, all for the sake of fame and fortune.
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by an anonymous guest critic
Lightning Ridge is a playfully-told family show about a rural Australian mining community. The trouble starts when Kelly-Ann’s two imaginary friends go missing, and the whole village has to come together to find them.
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by Laura Kressly
Jess and Victoria are best pals and girlbosses extraordinaire. As a response to what they see as too much sadness in the world, they’ve developed a five-step approach to “change ourselves and those around us”. The satire of self-help seminars, relentless positivity in the face of personal and societal collapse, and late-stage capitalism’s grifter culture is smart and initially silly, but underpinned by a serious message.
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by Laura Kressly
After several hard years, Paines Plough’s popup theatre’s programme seems to know that our fractured, individualistic society needs some love and care. Six of this year’s shows reflect this: characters feeling lost, adrift or unfulfilled are desperately searching for someone or something to cling onto and give them purpose, or to help them feel less alone.
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by Laura Kressly
Immensely intelligent Jerome has always struggled to find his place in the world. He was too poor to go to private school like his best friend Henry, but at secondary school he got bullied for sounding white and talking posh. This coming-of-age monologue navigates growing up when you don’t quite fit in on the estate in Harlesden, at the shop where you work, or at the competitive uni out of town.
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by Luisa De la Concha Montes
I Was Kinda the Bad Guy is Jaz Johnson’s debut play. This coming-of-age story explores the relationship between Diane (Jaz Johnson) and Nadine (Noah Fence), two friends that have developed a relationship of extreme closeness, becoming “one soul in two different bodies”. Diane’s mum recently abandoned her and she is dealing with the repercussion of this loss, which has made her distrustful of everyone, with the exception of Nadine.
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