This play won the 2023 Shelagh Delaney Award, certainly following in the tradition of ‘A Taste Of Honey’, taking a tough look at contemporary urban life. The rented flat in this story may have actually been built on the site of the terraced street in Delaney’s celebrated play. Young people, 60 years on, in the same place but with different issues, a flat replacing a terrace but life as complicated as ever.
New playwright Joanna Nicks chose the medium of a two-hander to show a picture of contemporary urban life which certainly helped create the feeling of isolation that can be sometimes a factor in modern life. The two friends Liv and Nadz who share the flat seemed at times to be in a partial state of comatose through the saturation of trash TV games shows, alcohol, social media and other elements of today’s world. It was not hard to imagine a block of flats of countless people not knowing each other but living in close proximity, all sitting watching the same programme or following the same meme on YouTube, drinking the same cheap wine. These two young women certainly wanted and deserved more but were just not quite sure how to find it.
A two-hander show brings its own challenges only exacerbated by the restrictions of a one-room single-set. The play imaginatively got around these restrictions through the device of frequent soliloquies, sometime alternating between the characters on either side of the stage. This worked very well in letting the audience know how the characters felt in view of their inability to communicate on a deep level with each other (to begin with at least). The large amount of stage space was used to the full, and considering this was just about two women in a flat, there was also a lot of movement. The direction ensured there were never any prolonged static scenes of Liv and Nadz just sitting at a table and it all looked very natural.
The extensive physical movement was mirrored by the full range of emotions displayed in this powerful play. Seeing Liv and Nadz’s inner feelings and tensions slowly emerge was akin to the peeling of an onion as the audience was taken into these women’s internal feelings and angsts. Peeling an onion brings tears, but there was hope as well (but no spoilers!), and the story was not without some humour either. The atmosphere was aided by a very effective set with plenty of attention to detail such as glitter light strips on the wall and lots of bric-a-brac around a few brightly coloured items of furniture. The use of emotive electronic music to denote the passing of time helped create a sense of urgency too. This was not Ayckbournesque suburbia!
Ellena Begley and Aaliya Azam were well cast as Liv and Nadz. There was a naturalness in their relationship as friends with shared lives and experiences but very different personalities. Liv used expletives as a normal mode of expression but when Nadz swore, you knew there was something up. Liv’s harder edge ultimately masked inner hurts whilst Nadz was tougher than her softer demeanour suggested, but both women had issues and the two actors convincingly brought over the emotional complexity of their respective characters. This was a play that was constantly shifting character dynamics and the pace never let up as the audience were taken in to Liv and Nadz’s separate worlds.
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