Nottingham Playhouse presents the UK regional premiere of Dennis Kelly’s gripping one-woman show, Girls & Boys, directed by Anna Ledwich.
This tour-de-force performance stars Nottingham-born Aisling Loftus in a compelling 90-minute exploration of love, family, and hidden truths. Girls & Boys blends savage humour with raw intensity, showcasing Kelly’s signature writing style and unflinching examination of human nature.
The production promises to be a powerful and timely piece, addressing themes that have become even more relevant since its London premiere in 2018. Listings and ticket information can be found here.
You’re bringing Girls & Boys to Nottingham Playhouse. What can you tell us about the show?
It’s a tour-de-force one-woman show, featuring a staggeringly fine actress in Aisling Loftus. She really is remarkable – funny, smart, emotionally transparent and endlessly surprising. It’s a show that takes the audience on a journey that is by turns hilarious, provocative, unsettling, dark and unflinchingly honest. If we’ve done our job properly you laugh in all the right places, and then need a hug afterwards.
How does Dennis Kelly’s writing style influence your directorial approach for this production?
Dennis is an extraordinarily precise writer. He doesn’t waste a word. So the most important approach has been to get out of the way! Of him and of Aisling, and just enable the story to unfold. Having said that, he writes with real rigour – how he crafts a sentence or a paragraph demands a forensic approach to performing it, so it’s been a case of attacking the text with a scalpel and pulling all the entrails out, before piecing it back together.
Can you discuss the challenges and opportunities of directing a one-woman show like Girls & Boys?
To be honest, it’s been a complete joy. Aisling is a very instinctive and emotionally present actor, so she’s made it easy. During rehearsals I’ve equated it to working with an elite athlete. You run alongside them as much as possible, throwing water, and protein bars, and words of encouragement, but ultimately Aisling is the one who has to do it, so my job is to get her match fit.
On a personal level, it’s an invitation to walk alongside a performer through – it is naturally a more intimate process. More chats, sharing confidences, laughing (a lot), allowing vulnerabilities to be exposed and accepted. Rather than having to corral a whole room of actors, each day’s rehearsal is a conversation. It’s a privilege.
How do you work with Aisling Loftus to bring out the different facets of her character throughout the performance?
I very intentionally brought in collaborators to contribute to the process. It felt very important that from a practical perspective that there was input from a movement director and a voice coach to support Aisling’s process.
What of course happens is that through this seemingly technical input, huge levels of meaning are revealed. For example, the voice work we did with Joel Trill was intended to enable Aisling to take on the physical challenge of doing a one-woman show. But through his exercises on breath and text work – there were huge leaps forward made in rehearsal, both in technique and in emotional sense.
It’s very exciting when all of that work synthesises, when everyone is on the same page, because then the performer is able to really fly. The work is a scaffolding that she doesn’t (and shouldn’t) have to think about.
The play touches on some intense themes. How do you balance the humour and the darker elements of the story?
I think the key is a rigorous adherence to each moment of the play. By that, I mean we cannot foreshadow or hint at the darker elements of the story, but rather take each beat in the present tense. It helps that there are genuinely some very funny lines in the play, particularly in the first half of the play – Dennis is a master of twisted humour!
But on top of that Aisling as a performer (and person) is very funny and luminous. So you’re lured in to the story, and are completely willing to go on the journey with her. The darker story elements are challenging and are meant to be confronting to some degree. But there is nothing exploitative or manipulative in the telling of them – the character has such integrity, you can’t help falling in love with her courage.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Girls & Boys?
If you love thrilling writing, if you want to witness a virtuosic actress at the top of her game, come and see the show.
GIRLS AND BOYS RUNS AT NOTTINGHAM PLAYHOUSE FROM SAT 8 Feb – SAT 1 Mar. For more information and to book click here https://nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk
