THE VIRGINS

Soho Theatre

★★★

“The writer has this gossipy girl talk just right and it’s exquisite”

Virginity, and the loss thereof, is a big money game.

Miriam Battye’s playful script initially lowers the stakes when sweet 16-year-old pals Jess and Chloe convene in the bathroom ahead of their big night out at Lizard Lounge.

The plan is simple, pull a boy then back home sans conquests for chicken dippers and a sleepover.

No reason to be scared. Boys are, after all, “just us, flattened out”.

But the arrival of Anya (Zoe Armer) changes everything. She’s in the year above Jess (Ella Bruccoleri) and Chloe (Anushka Chakravarti) when such gradations matter. Also, she’s made the biggest leap of all and, get this, she’s had sex, actual sex.

The virginal duo becomes a trio with the arrival of perplexed Phoebe (adorable scene stealer Molly Hewitt-Richards) and they all have many questions for Anya – and even more reservations.

Rosie Elnile’s set is split in two, the bathroom on the left and on the right the living room. This is where Chloe’s drippy brother Joel (Ragevan Vasan) is hanging out with cool-as-they-come gym buddy and dullard Mel (Alec Boaden) playing video games.

More on them later, but for now, the mere presence of boys in the house and the hint that Jess may have a crush on her bestie’s dweeb bro adds immediate tension.

Anya changes the rules of the game: Boys in the living room. Let’s get to work, girls. These days we can have it all, no consequences.

In Battye’s twinkling play these bathroom scenes are a joy and a highlight. At one point the girls are all crammed in the bath, as if this is their life raft on a sea of hormones, confusion, shame and uncertainty. The three innocents stared doe-eyed at Anya and each must figure out if losing the big V is a big thing, a small thing, nothing at all or a necessary evil.

The writer has this gossipy girl talk just right and it’s exquisite.

In contrast, what we find in the living room is an absence of anything remotely resembling a boy. Boys don’t talk like girls – they banter, the belittle, they boast – but Joel and Mel’s rare and gnomic utterances are dead on arrival.

The drama is entirely uninterested in the plausibility of the jock and the spineless milksop as friends and Mel’s mini info dump about why modern girls are to blame for modern boys is spurious and inert.

Perhaps Battye is making a point about boys as objects, as alien creatures. But the half and half staging suggests otherwise. On one side, we have natter and nuance, on the other, lumpen lads soaking up real estate.

That is one letdown. The other comes with director Jaz Woodcock-Stewart’s curious pacing. The whole thing is an elongated 85 minutes but could have been a swift and much funnier 65. There are enough comedy smash cuts to move it into the territory of screwball sex comedy – but the director clearly pines for Pinter.

When the girls take over the living room, they suffer from the same torpor, and the pacing never recovers. Yes, there are darker elements at play here, and painful confessions, but they are low-key and strangely lost.

There has been much hype about this play, selling it as a kind of bawdy romp for Gen Z. Battye means to say something meaningful about sex and identity and for that – and for the laughs – she deserves all the plaudits.

But the play is strangely hurried in the key moments and painfully slow elsewhere, making for a night that is as unbalanced as teetering Phoebe on vodka and lemonade.

THE VIRGINS

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 5th February 2026

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Camilla Greenwell

THE VIRGINS

★★★

“an honest look at the bruises and bonds that define us”

You can’t choose your family, but how much should you want to? And when should you choose yourself instead (or in spite) of them? Playwright Ela Moss asks these questions in Love Conditions, squashing three frustrated characters into a flat in Archway to unpack everything from their insecurities in commitment to their absent dads.

In the well-worn living room strewn with empty lager cans, Beth and boyfriend Alex bicker about and around Beth’s sister’s imminent arrival. When Kelly finally flounces in with an air of forced glamour (and a leopard print top to change into even though they’re staying inside), the arguments multiply, revelations rear their heads and ugly truths sneak out of clenched jaws.

Moments of carefully judged comic timing puncture the continuous sniping, particularly from Alec Boaden as Zac – his face freezing in befuddlement at another hairpin turn in debate from his unravelling girlfriend (Sophia Decaro). Sarah Andre White’s portrayal of Kelly had us snickering continuously as she strutted between wine bottle and wine glass, attempting to slowly prise back control over her sister, before giving up pretence and wrenching it instead. In one early scene, Beth and Kelly chatter back and forth, flipping jokes into jabs, throwing out cutting remarks and then scrambling to write the most well-versed ones down in the notes app. The unpredictable ping-pong match of sisterhood is vibrant here.

The foundations are solid, but the play is unfortunately uneven in delivery. We get hits of theatrical flair in Harper K. Hefferon’s direction, like Kelly’s arrival. There’s an initial freeze frame lit in red which hits deliciously between ominous and camp, before her lofty and patronising demeanour is firmly established. But in later scenes, it felt a bit like the actors had run out of things to do in the space, becoming boomerangs, picking up and placing down wine bottles before asking for a top-up.

It doesn’t feel like these characters truly have nowhere else to go, which punctures the premise of the play. Mostly, the confrontational dialogue tumbles out smoothly, but as we progress it doesn’t always feel like linear development. Some of Beth’s lines feel like they’ve been elbowed into the script to put a pithy opinion in front of an audience, rather than being true to that character. There are a few specifics lacking which would ground the audience in the truth of the narrative, for example, the age difference between the sisters seems to swing uncertainly between anecdotes and storylines. Willoughby Brow’s design is understated but well-judged, with the set and costumes giving us distinct hints about the finer points of each characters’ status.

In a one-room play where the dynamics are the drama, there’s a fine line between claustrophobic and repetitive. Unfortunately we land a little too close to the latter in this production, but there’s still a solid collection of reflections on family, trauma and what we owe each other. Despite its flaws, this is an honest look at the bruises and bonds that define us.

Tag Archives: Alec Boaden

THE VIRGINS

★★★

Soho Theatre

THE VIRGINS

Soho Theatre

★★★

“The writer has this gossipy girl talk just right and it’s exquisite”