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High anxiety: Collapse - Riverside Studios

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It’s a brave or maybe slightly provocative production to use Hammersmith Bridge on their artwork for a show called Collapse, which is about how everything collapses—poorly maintained bridges, relationships, and jobs. Nothing works. That’s probably too close to home for Hammersmith residents stuck with a magnificently listed and useless bridge on their front door. It gets even weirder when you realise the piece is staged in what looks like a meeting room with a bar. However, keeping things together in the most unlikely of circumstances is at the heart of Allison Moore's witty and engaging four-hander, which is currently having a limited engagement at Riverside Studios . The piece opens with Hannah (Emma Haines) about to get an injection from her husband (Keenan Heinzelmann). They’re struggling for a baby, and he’s struggling to get out of bed. But he managed to give her a shot of hormones before she started worrying about the rest of the day. She’s unsure she will keep her job with ...

More sex and violence: Playfight @sohotheatre

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The funny thing about three girls growing up under a tree is that you never quite know when they're being serious or just messing about. One time, they might be talking about giving blow jobs on a tennis court at school and another, they might be yearning for a connection that they can't quite explain. That's what happens in Playfight, an Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2024 hit currently showing at Soho Theatre. 

Writer Julia Grogan doesn't give us much time to dwell on the lives of these three young teenage girls. One minute, they're fifteen and giggling, and then the next thing, they're off getting married or going to University. But underneath all the smutty talk, humour, and quick scene changes, there is a darker underbelly about relationships, power, and consent. It's about finding your way in a complex world that can dehumanise and degrade you. But as things move so quickly, you could blink and miss it.

This is too bad as the performances capturing this coming-of-age moment are terrific. There's the free-wheeling and dirty Keira (Sophie Cox), who films her escapades as proof for her mates, the studious Zainab (Nina Cassells), who is focused on getting good grades to get out of town and the pious Lucy (Lucy Mangan), who isn't sure about what she wants. You never get quite enough time to understand who they are. There is a punch line usually about sex and the scene changes. But guilt, shame and violence never seem to be far away.

It's a simple production, with mulch on the stage and a bright pink ladder planted to depict the old tree the girls would gather under. While not quite the colour, it did seem to evoke the domestic violence benches in parks—a place marked as safe. In this piece, safe spaces are illusory and not even your friends can help you. They have neither the life skills nor the support network. And that's an interesting comment on life in this country. 

Directed by Emma Callander, Playfight is at Soho Theatre until  26 April. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Photo by Paul Blakemore

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