For anyone who grew up on a diet of teenage media such as Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging and My Mad Fat Diary, Lambslaughter at the King’s Head Theatre will seem achingly familiar. Written and directed by Olivia Revans, the play perfectly encapsulates the tempestuous humour and insidious anxiety of adolescent girls as they navigate the transition from school to university.
Set in Merseyside in 2013, the play explores the blurred lines between two Catholic school girls, Jade and Chloe, and their English teacher, Mr Barrett. Jade is struggling with an eating disorder, whilst Chloe’s boyfriend is problematically older than her. The pair run an anonymous Twitter account where they post brutally honest and often subversive commentary on life at school. In the absence of parental supervision, Mr Barrett becomes a guiding light in their turbulent adolescence, but is the girls’ student-teacher relationship appropriate?
Lambslaughter has a small cast, but the three actors skilfully keep the audience’s attention throughout the play’s hour-and-a-half runtime. Erin Riley as Chloe gives a magnetic performance as the confident, loud-mouthed girl navigating her sexuality and plans for the future. Freya Jones plays a quieter and more subdued character as Jade, but skilfully portrays Jade’s desperate and valid anxiety about what it means to be a young woman. Finally, Louie Threlfall as the complex Mr Barrett successfully depicts the thin line between kind and creepy.
With a razor-sharp script and excellent acting, it only seems a shame that the set is so minimal. The constraints of the production are understandable, but one might argue that such high standards of writing deserve a more elaborate backdrop. This is a minor quibble, as the choreography dynamically makes use of the simple props available. Some of the lighting choices are distracting and could be refined in the future, but overall they do not diminish the vivacity of the play.
Lambslaughter is a hilariously poignant exploration of girlhood in a digital age. The partial epistolary storytelling through the teenagers’ tweets is, at the same time, recognisably funny and a concerning commentary on today’s social media landscape. The themes explored are as relevant now as they were during the play’s time period. Revans’s writing is excellent, and she is one to watch in the future.
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