Brighton Fringe 2025

Rank

Goldie Matjas

Genre: Comedic, Comedy, Dark Comedy, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Theatre

Venue: Ironworks Studios, Brighton BN2 1PA

Festival: Brighton Fringe

Low Down

Review

I haven’t laughed so much at a play for a very long time.  And I wasn’t alone – the capacity audience at Ironworks constantly erupted into gales of the stuff.

I suppose it was partly down to the characters themselves  –  Goldie Majtas as Gemma, increasingly voluble and frustrated at their lack of transport home;  Paige Cowell as her mate Jane, with her hair in bunches and her little-girl voice.    But it was also due to the spark between the pair, physically holding each other up (they’re very pissed) and constantly cutting in and building on each other’s lines.

And a lot of it was down to the situation.   These are two very close friends, in their early twenties, and they’ve been out boozing, and they’ve seen someone who looks hot, and might have been up for a shag.   But what do you do about it?   We’ve all been there  –  I certainly have; and judging by the delighted gasps of recognition from all around me, most of the audience had, too.

I’m in a bit of a dilemma, here.  I want to give you a feel of what ‘Rank’ is like, but I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag …

Goldie Majtas has written ‘Rank’ as a series of relatively short sections, with the intention of eventually promoting it as a television series.  We were given Acts 1 to 3 in this performance, but there’s a sub-plot that builds in intensity, and Act 3 ended on a really sinister note, so I’m looking forward to subsequent Acts.

If I have any criticism of the performance, it would be that a lot of the lines were delivered very naturalistically, at real conversation speed, and thus quite breathlessly fast.  It sounded great, and I think that that would work well on TV, but at Ironworks it meant that the live audience’s laughter often covered the start of the following character’s words.

In Acts 2 and 3 we are back at the women’s flat.  A real ex-student tip, minimally sketched in for us by a sofa, flanked by a sad pot-plant and a clothes-drier; and a small dining table littered with empty Pot Noodle tubs.   Gemma’s only recently broken up with Archie, and a lot of the comedy was about Jane’s attempts to convince her friend that she’s made the right decision.  It’s certainly time for Gemma to move on – and that might just involve the hot guy they’d spotted the night before.

Most of us will have seen ‘Adolescence’ recently, and if we learned anything from that masterpiece, it was to be very careful about our use of social media on our phones.  A lesson that these women could well have heeded …

Another lesson would have been – don’t get heavily into the Stolly before you go on a hot date, or to an important job interview.  But hey ho  –  we’re only young once …

‘Rank’ is all about being young – just a few years out of education, able to enjoy the pleasures of being grown up without the ties of a spouse or children or a mortgage.  It’s about sharing drunken evenings with your bestie, and sitting hungover with them the next day, watching shit TV.   It’s about spending forever deciding what to wear on that special date, and having a shoulder to cry on when it all goes tits-up.  (possibly due to too many shots of Stolly before you went out …)

In short – though there’s an important sub-plot that I won’t spoil – it’s a very , very funny show about LIFE.

I loved it.     I wasn’t the only one – there was a standing ovation from the Ironworks audience at the end.    Certainly one to watch out for – try to catch it if you can.

Published May 9, 2025May 9, 2025 by Strat Mastoris