Search

Saved articles

You have not yet added any article to your bookmarks!

Browse articles

GDPR Compliance

We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service.

Stiff Dicky

 
Lucy Davidson Review by Lucy Davidson 4 Published: 15 Aug 2017 SpaceTriplex Show Dates: 4 Aug 2017-19 Aug 2017

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 Stiff Dicky is not only an accurate depiction of language but also of the lives that young people lead. Slick, funny and warm, writer Georgia Taylforth’s exploration of the consequences of a night out is a refreshingly honest look at the messy world of young love and friendship.

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.

Related to this article:

Location:

Performances

The Blurb:

Your bedroom, your lover, his girlfriend, your housemate, the guy who can’t speak English, and then a stiffy. Hard enough at the best of times, let alone on a stinking hangover. Bella can pretty much handle anything, but first, where's that cup of tea?