FringeReview UK 2023

£1 Thursdays

Julia Blomberg for £1 Thursdays Ltd in Association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre

Genre: Comedy, Contemporary, Dance and Movement Theatre, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Fringe Theatre, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: Finborough Theatre

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

It’s 2012. Two 17-year-old girls with the no-future of austerity before them have one consolation. What does Bradford have unlike the rest of the world? ”What they don’t have, they don’t have £1 Thursdays.” Kat Rose-Martin’s £1 Thursdays is directed by Vicky Moran (Under the Net, Jermyn Street) at Finborough Theatre till December 22^nd.

That was Oxbridge-bright Jan (Yasmin Taheri) telling gifted dancer friend Stacey (Monique Ashe-Palmer) of the consolations of staying put. Paradoxically it’s Stacey, not academic but bright enough to pursue teacher training, who points to Newcastle University by way of an escape. But there’s demons inner and outer. And the joy of £1 Thursdays. And when toilets fail, there’s always the kerb.

Before that the two actors work the mainly young crowd, sit with audience, drag people to dance. In this tiny space with seats in traverse, it’s an exhilarating opening to 90 minutes of pure wild-ride theatre.

Ashe-Palmer does dance-moves, exudes both mouthy confidence and occasional pratfalls, especially registering what she’s said: and later, broken fright. Taheri, previously at the RSC, exudes knowing judgment on life and everyone in it; but also makes the rude lyrical and lilts the explicit as matter-of-fact as a maths equation. Great chemistry too.

Ethan Cheek’s minimal royal-blue-painted set is ingenious: erected elastic and moveable cordons with temporary tents zipped in a corner (one each end) for a club toilet or nurse examination for STI. Actors apparate in and out of Cheek’s costumes as we traverse a rollercoaster year. Rajiv Pattani’s lighting works to boppy effect from disco to wintry starlight to dim-bulb home.

Bradford-born Rose-Martin’s known for TV work and noted One to Watch with awards in 2020/2021. On stage there’s plays like Shit But Mine with Paines Plough and as an actor Northern Broadsides (from where after their Two Noble Kinsman Rose-Martin’s Aphra Behn monologue was commissioned for her to perform by the Globe during lockdown).

On this evidence Rose-Martin’s certainly one to watch and it’s time her work’s featured in London. £1’s not a play attempting formal experiment, but the joyously experiential: explicit, in-yer-face living.

The two teenagers’ lives revolve round schoolwork, the release of clubbing, friendship and so-so sexual highs they encounter. The moment they check their STI tests – Jen’s is positive – is immediately undercut by Jen’s mum Leanne (Sian Brecklin, also seen-it-all-but-don’t-swear Nurse), attending self-defence classes and desperately trying to make her one-parent ends meet. And wanting to befriend Jen, not what Jen wants now, who’s hiding things from Leanne. Whilst Stacey’s offstage mum is beset by ailing children.

Brecklin’s excellent as both shrewd, warmly supportive, occasionally just a bit needy Leanne: who literally packs surprises. Rose-Martin’s portrait of a warm, evolving mother-daughter relationship is punctured with humour, as well as Leanne’s genuine and wannabe-hip language. Leanne’s sexually active and stereotypes of an attractive older woman get quietly, neatly punctured.

Rose-Martin inverts expectations of the two young women’s roles. Not for the first time in drama it’s uber-bright Jen who’s more sexually adventurous, as they examine fillets in bras, and can see ahead to a bleaker future than Stacey.

The crisis occurs round a man, where else? Nathan (Joseph Ayre) is 26 and uh-oh paternalist over Stacey. Not going to end well. Ayre ensures Nathan’s nuanced, for instance genuinely appalled when Stacey does something that upsets her relationship with Jen; but also threatened by Jen, her sexuality and cleverness whom he thinks will soon leave. He might undermine what Stacey could achieve.  Ayres scores too as Phd student, 27year-old ex-Bradford interviewer Tristan, who likes to return-serve on surprise stereotypes: but Jen’s cleverness both catches him out and determines him to fight for her outside both the box, and hers.

Rose-Martin’s characterisation works through subtle shifts.  Jen’s been waiting for Stacey to detach from new love-interest Nathan:

“Spent the last forty minutes exchanging saliva, yes. Whilst I’ve frozen my tits off, had my arse grabbed  four times and then been called a slut by Linzi Marsden from the year above.”

It’s a blistering riposte, but Rose-Martin’s sure to keep Jen’s precise use of language. “Whilst” and “the year above” suggests someone using words way beyond the stereotypical demotic, refuses categorisation. Jen’s someone who doesn’t surprise you by calculating arithmetic faster than maths PhD Tristan who interviews her (arithmetic isn’t maths, but this isn’t Proof).

How often do we get the voices of 17-year-olds talking of sex and STI? Its nearest kin is perhaps Elinor Cook’s wonderful Out of Love (Orange Tree, 2018) which also features two girls; only one gets to uni, with a twist, as well as a 20 years-later ending.

Moran, who did her best with beautifully-intentioned, timely but kooky and saggy Under the Net in January, is on surer ground here. It helps there’s a fine team: Nadia Sohawon’s movement is everywhere. There’s separate intimacy directing from Raniah Al-Sayed, and a moment (you hope it’s coming, it does) from Sian Behan’s delicious fight direction: you’ll cheer along with every audience who’ll see this. There’s even wellbeing support from Stacey Permaul.

“It’s wonderful, really different to all the historical Irish English and Scottish and Canadian plays they do here” said a couple of older audience members (the matinee was crowded with young faces). It’s great older audience members love this play, though manifestly wrong about the Finborough which mounts a lot of these. The next last play was Dead Dog Dad from 1985 and its new but illness-cancelled sequel. There’ll be more soon.

Let’s hope there’s a sequel here or in London soon for Rose-Martin’s plays. A first-rate premiere, which being set 11 years ago (developed at the Stockroom in 2019) is already both too contemporary and perennial. A must-see for anyone who cares for authentic new theatre, built to last.

Published December 3, 2023 by Simon Jenner