Show: ‘The Fall’, ‘Bitches’ and ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’
Society: National Youth Theatre of Great Britain (NYT)
Venue: Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED
Credits: James Fritz | Bola Agbaje | Mohsin Hamid, adapted for the stage by Stephanie Street
Type: Sardines
Author: Chris Abbott
Performance Date: 17/08/2016
Bitches
Chris Abbott | 18 Aug 2016 12:12pm
Photos: Tara Tijani and Kat Humphrey in NYT’s ‘Bitches’. Image: Mark Cocksedge
The second play in the NYT season at the Finborough is Bitches by Bola Agbaje, a pacy and energetic insight into the relationship between two teenage girls, and played out in the bedroom of one of them. The audience enter and sit on three sides of this room as the two young protagonists dance and sing, explicit lyrics at variance with the coloured lights and soft toys in the room. We immediately feel like intruders, and the raised edges and roof of the set make us seem to be looked at a glass tank in an aquarium, and we dutifully switch off our phones as instructed even as those onstage start using theirs.
The detailed set by Emma Bailey nicely contrasts the pink and child-like features in the bedroom with the larger issues and difficult confrontations that arise as these two young female vloggers negotiate their way through issues of race, language and friendship. The author’s use of the pause/unpause command during recording is a particularly interesting and effective dramatic device.
The bedroom belongs to Funke, daughter of a strict off-stage Nigerian mother and totally convincing in a truthful and exuberant performance from Tara Tijani. Opposite her is Katherine Humphrey as Cleo, very much in the shadow of her friend for much of the time, but increasingly confident as she resists the implication that issues like racism are as simple as Funke seems to be suggesting. In an 85 minute play, this actor has to move from subservience to a newly negotiated partnership, and this she does totally convincingly.
Both actors play off each other as friends do, continually testing limits, and the audience accept their relationship as genuine and believable, with Funke’s brittle and insecure bravado against Cleo’s touching vulnerability. A third character in the piece is the soundtrack from Will Alder, with arriving texts and the sound of responses portraying for the audience the reactions of others online to the posts from the two protagonists, with the voice of the mother and the online response turning both characters back to the young girls that some would see them as.
Like the first play in this enterprising season at the Finborough, Bitches will speak powerfully to young people, and the issues it raises around race in particular will lead to considerable discussion among audience members, as was apparent after this performance. Director Valentina Ceschi has provided an engrossing portrait of a fracturing relationship and preserves the subtleties of the script as well as sensitively indicating the wider online responses to what is happening in this private/public space.
- : admin
- : 17/08/2016