You are informally invited to the quarter-life crisis convention; please be aware that firecracker wit, excessive metaphors, discussion of masturbation and mephedrone, fiercely intelligent social-political references, scrunchies, and the
The genius of her work is simmering away; in a few years your ticket stub will be the kudos you saw her concoction of sex, drugs and lonely disco here first.
In this candid two-hander, we have Jules and Juno, two women trying to understand what being a woman even means: self-destruction, soy lattes, Scarlett Johansson, pubic hair, conforming, capitalism, kids, a career, club nights, Ketamine, loneliness; all variants are considered through a stream of dialoguing scenes. Despite being linked by high school and their best friends death, they lead very different lives: Jules (Keith-Roach) is an artist, dog-walker, generation flat-white member in austerity and an IVF baby who’s got all scrambled up by society. Juno (Zardoe) is that girl with that bum in the gym, a competitive finance job, a man, a future-plan and a life as a victim of the 9-5 — fried. Between cast and creatives, this is the ultimate theatrical girl band. ‘Rising star in the London theatre scene’ has rather become writer and performer Florence Keith-Roach’s masthead. The genius of her work is simmering away; in a few years your ticket stub will be the kudos you saw her concoction of sex, drugs and lonely disco here first.
Eggs is the right kind of weird at the Fringe. Poignant, poppy, punchy, smart and scrappy. With a healthy dollop of self-aware pretentiousness and generational angst and a beautiful lack of self-conscious comedy. Zardoe and Keith-Roach share a potent and magnetic chemistry and capture that angst, adoration, jealousy, and ridiculousness that comes with female friendship, with full-bodied expressionism and howling relatability. All the things we think and never say but should. Eavesdropping on your best friends who don’t know that they are going to be your best friends yet.
A Wilde-esque social current pulses through the piece, making it achingly relevant without carrying an agenda. Indeed the whole play is infused with sparkling humour and shrewdness that bubbles up subtly. This is a play that knows how and when to be unserious about the serious. Sensitive subject matter is handled with lightness, delicacy and poignancy and pathos, allowing us to touch rawer issues but bringing us back at exactly the right point: suicidal thoughts soundtracked to supermarket music and shopping lists.
Though men are from Mars, we’re all from Eggs. Whilst the more faint-hearted of ‘men’ might run scared at the prospect of this shot-of-oestrogen show, this isn’t in-your-face-feminism and should be appreciated regardless of gender. What’s more, they will finally have an all-access pass to what girls do at slumber parties and why they take so long in the loo.
A smorgasbord of superlatives are often lambasted onto shows in praise, but I have tried my hardest to restrain. Firstly, I am too daunted by Keith-Roach’s literary prowess to even attempt to match it. Secondly, it’s brilliance is hard to put your finger on or explain, like the greatest of plays and best of peanut butter jelly sandwiches. It is rare that things handed out for free at 12 o’clock in a nightclub are so good. Honest. Human. Real. Frank. Funny. And a prescriptive prerequisite for being a woman - whatever that is.
