“well worth seeing for its touching portrayal of Gen Z friendship and confirms Frankie Meredith as a writing talent to watch”
Frankie Meredith’s two-hander depicts best friends Yasmin and Casey navigating the dizzying transitions of Year 13: its whirlwind of illicit boozing, UCAS, sexual experimentation, open days, Snapchat and anxious parents. They are bright, ambitious girls (further maths loving Yasmin is applying to Imperial) sharing in the triumphs and crises of small town teenage existence. Their friendship provides solace from Yasmin’s overbearing Sikh household and Casey’s more ambiguous problems at home.
Meredith’s writing captures the texture of hyperactive teenspeak very well. She powerfully depicts the anxiety of lives saturated by social media, where every comment, view, like or unreturned message is a possible source of misery. One lovely scene has Yasmin constructing a forensic timeline of Casey’s recent romantic betrayal through apparently banal Instagram exchanges. Meredith skillfully suggests the struggle for current teens to forge their own identity amidst unprecedented expectations of social and academic success.
The show is technically ambitious, making canny and restrained use of projection to illustrate the girls’ online life. It benefits from Balisha Karra and Finley-Rose Townsend’s lucid direction and thoughtful use of the tricky traverse space in The Vaults’ Cavern. As the two girls, Annice Boparai and Emma James excel in evoking a late-pubescent combination of self-assurance and naivety. James also excels in her multi-rolling: her turn as Yasmin’s cocksure first-ever-boyfriend was especially well-drawn.
Though the characters are realised wonderfully, the show is less accomplished in its plotting and felt, at times, like a first draft. The second half drifts into familiar teen-drama territory, though this was redeemed towards the end by some moving insights and astute character development. The play also attempts to incorporate lyricism through the odd foray into rhyming couplets which don’t feel entirely organic against the rest of the dialogue.
Nevertheless, 17 is well worth seeing for its touching portrayal of Gen Z friendship and confirms Frankie Meredith as a writing talent to watch.
“The actors are confident and energetic, and the piece has wonderful moments of intrigue”
The 2019 VAULT Festival has officially begun! As I walked into the neon-lit labyrinth of The Vaults it was less grand opening, more business as usual: numerous theatre spaces and a packed schedule of shows. The space was The Pit, and the show was ‘Inside Voices’. Labelled as a dark comedy, this piece follows three Southeast Asian women attempting to break free from the constraints imposed by their race, culture, religion and gender. It has been published by Nick Hern books as one of the top seven new plays at The Vaults this year, so I was excited and optimistic as I took my seat.
The play starts very simply: three women sitting around a food tray eating and talking. It was an early opportunity to show the audience what great chemistry these actresses had, and it was a pleasure to watch. Instantly we knew what the relationship was between these three women, who used each other’s company as a chance to escape the pressure of their normal lives. Suhaili Safari particularly shines as the young idealist Nisa, and had buckets of energy throughout the show. Indeed, the whole piece was peppered with these simple but effective moments, be it Fatimah tenderly rubbing Nisa’s belly when she feels sick or the characters constantly talking over each other, which anyone in a close friendship group will be all too familiar with. It was in these moments that the tragedy of the piece really stuck out, and we learned of the tough experiences that forged these women into who they are.
Sadly, these moments fell few and far between, and what started as an effective and subtle drama slowly became a more polemic comment on intersectionality and the #MeToo movement. In these moments, you could feel a shift in the audience mentality. Whereas in the start of the play we were being invited to watch and search for our own interpretations, here we were being told what to think. This is perhaps easier for an audience, but not nearly as enjoyable or rewarding. These moments did drag and left me craving for the more intimate, seemingly mundane but charged scenes between these interesting women.
This show has a strong identity to it, and its message of social oppression and the battle these women face will resonate with a modern audience. The actors are confident and energetic, and the piece has wonderful moments of intrigue. I only wish that I could have been kept intrigued for longer.
