Girls & Boys by Dennis Kelly. Directed by Anna Ledwich. Actor Aisling Loftus. Set design Janet Bird.
The premise and the promise
‘It starts as a typical love story – boy meets girl and sparks fly. An intense, passionate relationship begins. In time they settle down, have children and live ordinary, chaotic lives. But beneath the veneer of normality, a disturbing undercurrent is growing. Their seemingly perfect world unravels, revealing shocking truths about family, violence and what really goes on behind closed doors.’
Nottingham Playhouse.
One important expression will haunt the undercurrents of writing this necessarily short but glowing review and that is [NO SPOILERS]. To explain even part of this fantastically gripping one-woman play terrifically performed by Aisling Loftus and directed with great finesse by Anna Ledwich would be to cripple the playwright Dennis Kelly’s astounding storytelling. And ruin the experience for other theatre-goers.
Janet Bird’s set designs are a clinically domestic wonder to behold and aesthetically help to carry the play to it’s dramatic conclusions.
Beginning front of stage, Loftus’ barefoot character known simply as ‘Woman’, speaks directly to the audience and the fourth wall is broken (for the first of many times) with the start of a two-hour monologue that topically isn’t so dissimilar to the direct down-and-dirty confessions of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. By the time you stumble out of the theatre sans interval all your possible preconceptions of how this play may unfold will have evaporated into the realms of darkness via Aisling Loftus’ frank disclosures. There’s that NO SPOILERS alert once again echoing down the central aisle. Let’s just say this play and the performance holds quite a few surprises.
I have never heard a theatre audience so absolutely quiet as Loftus spills the, initially very funny colourful beans, about her life and her love life. Her delivery is some of the most naturalistic acting I have seen on any stage in fifteen years of reviewing and goes to prove you don’t have to over theatrically delve into shrieking histrionics to keep an audience hanging on your every subtly delivered syllable. Imagine the challenge of learning and performing nearly two hours of script and acting it out all out uber convincingly to a live audience. Aisling Loftus and the creative teams at Nottingham Playhouse have certainly pulled out all the dramatic stops with Girls & Boys and it 100% deserves to be seen.
