Playfight (BOV)

Theatre in the round at Bristol Old Vic’s Weston Studio sees three teenage girls clustered around an oak tree at the centre of the stage, negotiating their passage through teenage years to adulthood.

Playfight is a three-woman drama following a group of friends over the course of 10 years, through their GSCEs to navigating their first sexual experiences and working out what they want to do with their lives.

This beautifully written play speaks loudly and clearly about girls’ experience as they come of age and become sexually active, and above all, of the importance of female friendship.

There’s Kiera (played with excellent command by Sophie Cox): the brash, over-the-top, and slightly misguided northerner who recounts losing her virginity on a tennis court with close to no filter. There’s Lucy (Lucy Mangan): ditzy, Christian, and somewhat secretive. Then, there’s Zainab, (Nina Cassells): the headstrong, sceptical, intelligent lesbian who realises she has feelings for her friend.

The whole thing plays out around ‘tree’, their playground meeting point, represented in Hazel Low’s gorgeous, simple set by a luminous ladder in the middle of the floor. The cast walk, climb and swing around it, as tensions unravel in the circle staging.

As years pass and scenes play out with a great, compelling pace, we see the girls grow in distance – summed up best by the scene where Zainab reads out a chapter of ‘Sapiens’, contemplating university, while helping Kiera to take photographs of her feet to sell online.

Towards the end, as the girls reach the age of 24, the story takes a sinister turn. Edgy, vulnerable and, at times, ruthless, ‘Playfight’ will replay in your head long after you wave the cast goodbye.

It’s frequently funny and sometimes shocking as the girls unwittingly share their vulnerabilities as well as their burgeoning sexuality.

Julia Grogan had a Fringe hit last year with Gunter which she devised with the company, Dirty Hare but this is her first solo play. Her crackling script leaps off the page with dialogue that feels real and funny.

It walks a delicate tightrope between the times when the girls have no filter and just open their mouths and spit out whatever’s on their minds, or the times when they hold back or embroider the truth in the way that teenage girls do when they’re either embarrassed or ashamed or both. She paints a vivid picture of teenage girls and their emergent female activity in a society where male dominance and violence is ever present as part of the backdrop.

The original actors: Nina Cassells, Sophie Cox and Lucy Mangan are reunited for this spring tour, which is helmed by Emma Callander and produced by Grace Dickson.

It is a funny, brutal, and dark piece, all set around ‘Tree’, a shocking pink ladder surrounded by wood chippings. This is their safe space, even though the thoughts and events they describe are anything but.

The realistic dialogue and acting of the three protagonists trying to come to terms with coming-of-age underlines the truth and importance of Playfight, which received a deserved standing ovation at the Weston Studio.