FLUSH
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
★★★
“the young actresses all show impressive range in their multi-rolling”
Flush is a cross section of one night in the women’s toilets of a Hackney club. Fast paced and wide-ranging, it offers a kaleidoscopic view of the female hivemind anno 2025.
With fourteen characters, it’s an ambitious script. Most are part of groups, including a flock of giddy underaged girls, office workers out on the town, and a cow-themed hen do. April Hope Miller, who also wrote the piece, shines as a diabolical maid of honour, while Ayesha Griffiths harvests many a laugh as a woman who is considering how to rid herself of her disappointing Hinge date. Jazz Jenkins convincingly portrays the play’s central character, Billie, a recent immigrant from the US who gets assaulted by the manager at her new job. Aided by quick-changing lights (Jack Hathaway) and club-inspired music (Yanni Ng, Jacana People), director Merle Wheldon crafts a cinematic depiction of Billie’s trauma-and-ketamine-induced haze, as clubgoers swirl around her in fast motion. In Flush, there are as many themes as characters, and perhaps there are too many of both – that being said, the young actresses all show impressive range in their multi-rolling.
The play’s central premise is the singularity of women’s toilets as a space that enables raw interactions between women from all walks of life. In the dialogue, references to the characters outside of the bathroom effectively conjure up a world beyond the stage, which underlines the physical distinctiveness of the female lavatories. But how, and why, these toilets and that wider world differ remains underexplored in the script, leaving the question of space and separation somewhat neglected. Additionally, I was surprised that, despite the inclusion of a trans character, the script did not address the question of who ‘belongs’ in the ‘women’s’ bathroom, an issue which has become increasingly debated in recent years and would lend the piece more urgency.
On stage, there is a similar lack of precision regarding the female toilet as a physical space. The omission of walls and doors from the three toilets on stage preserves visibility, but the difference between the inside and the outside of a cubicle is crucial, exemplified the various characters that ‘hide’ in the toilet. This separation within the lavatory could have easily been created through lights or careful blocking, but unfortunately, it’s mostly unclear where the cubicle ends and the sink area begins. Additionally, few of the characters use the lavatory for its primary purpose: the loos are generally used as seats, and no one washes or dries their hands, leaving the blocking static at times.
Perhaps overly ambitious, Flush offers an (early) afternoon of feminist entertainment that leaves you looking forward to your next visit to that complicated sanctuary known as the female bathrooms.
FLUSH
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Reviewed on 14th August 2025 at Upstairs at Pleasance Courtyard
by Lola Stakenburg
Photography by Jake Bush
