SINGLE WHITE FEMALE

Theatre Royal Brighton

★★★

“lively and watchable, with enough intrigue to carry it through”

Remember the 80s and 90s thrillers that spawned the ‘…from hell’ craze, where flatmates, temps, stepparents, nannies or neighbours could turn deadly? I do, and I confess to a soft spot for the overwrought psychological thriller. Single White Female (1992), with Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh going head to head as warring flatmates, is one I remember fondly. Rebecca Reid’s stage adaptation brings the story into a 21st-century UK shaped by two decades of social media, where entire lives, or curated versions of them, are easily tracked.

At its heart, the play is a domestic thriller about obsession, loneliness and the fragile dynamics of family. A seemingly ordinary living arrangement between Allie and Hedy spirals into a battle of trust, boundaries and control, creating a constant low-level unease that rarely rises into full-blown suspense.

Lisa Faulkner plays Allie, a recently divorced mother juggling parenthood with the pressures of launching a tech start-up. Kym Marsh stars as Hedy, the lodger brought in to help cover mortgage payments on the high-rise London apartment shared with Allie’s stroppy teenage daughter Bella, played convincingly by Amy Snudden. Hedy is outwardly charming and attentive, gradually revealing a more unsettling side, particularly where Bella is concerned. The relationship between Hedy and Allie forms the heart of the play, a push and pull of trust and dependence, yet the dynamic never quite acquires the lived-in tension needed to sharpen the thriller’s edge.

Much is made in the publicity of social media’s role in enabling obsession, though this remains more discussed than dramatised. What lands more convincingly is its impact on fifteen-year-old Bella, for whom bullying no longer ends at the school gate. Her storyline becomes one of the production’s stronger strands, positioning her as both participant and pawn in the power struggle between her parents and Hedy.

The focus on the central female relationship creates a tense triangle between Allie, Hedy and Bella, leaving the two male roles peripheral. Jonny McGarrity’s Sam, a recovering alcoholic ex now expecting another child, and Andro’s Graham, Allie’s gay best friend and business partner, feel lightly sketched, more as foils than fully realised characters. The script attempts to deepen Sam’s character through brief flashbacks, with Allie and Sam stepping outside the apartment to replay fragments of their marriage. These snapshots complicate the image of the relationship Allie presents, though they feel more illustrative than revelatory. As in the original film, the production ultimately belongs to the two women.

Director Gordon Greenberg keeps the pacing brisk, balancing moments of menace with domestic detail, though much of the play’s atmosphere comes from the interplay of set and sound. Morgan Large’s single open-plan apartment appears modern but subtly unstable: a window that will not fully close lets traffic drift in, electricity flickers unpredictably, and a picture frequently slip from its fixings. The lift clanks and grinds, while the brittle buzz of the entry system punctuates the action, emphasising the fragility of both the building and its occupants. Max Pappenheim’s sound design and score heighten the emotional stakes, using music like a film score to underscore fear, tension and escalating psychological pressure. Together, set and sound transform the flat into an almost sentient presence, echoing the strain between Allie, Hedy and Bella and amplifying Hedy’s escalating plan.

The second act leans into excess, prompting laughter that feels part nervous release, part response to moments of over-the-top melodrama. It is not subtle and often veers into OTT territory, recalling the lurid thrillers of the 80s and 90s. Shocks arrive, but the suspense rarely sustains, and the themes of obsession and belonging never fully land. Still, the production remains lively and watchable, with enough intrigue to carry it through even when later plot turns stray into the ridiculous.