Theatre aiming to portray the lives of millennials is so often completely wrong and patronising (no, we don’t say the word ‘rad’ any more, or believe that wearing snapbacks is anything but a travesty). However, Junkbox Theatre’s
A show that is crude, ridiculous and varied – but completely accurate and surprisingly touching at times.
We follow a group of young teens and twenty-somethings as they prepare to go, experience, and pay the price for a night out. The events that ensue the next morning are exaggerated but believable, as director Jack Coleby has the cast expertly walk the fine line between drama and comedy.
Centerstage and with the audience watching from three sides, the bed in the opening scene becomes a bar in a nightclub, and then a bed again with effortless ease by the cast. No scene is too long or boring: I was enraptured by the profanity-ridden, bold, and at times sensitively-handled subject matter that the play manages to pack into a mere 45 minutes. In particular, Taylforth’s spot on depiction of misogyny – from strangers in nightclubs to friends slut-shaming each other – is a sensitive handling amongst the messy, lovely noise of the rest of the play. This exploration of the darker side of the modern world of dating further lifted the play, as we are on the side of the millennials, despite the world not being so.
From the understandably jealous Phoebe, played with a sharp wit by Alexandra Mardell, to the simply abrasive but secretly sweet Bella, performed to perfection by Georgia Taylforth, all the characters were individual and well defined. In particular, Hippolyte Poirer’s performance as the bumbling and earnest Frenchman was very funny indeed. In Stiff Dicky Georgia Taylforth has managed to do what so many writers can only dream of achieving: she has created a show that is crude, ridiculous and varied – but completely accurate and surprisingly touching at times.
