Rosie Day’s one-woman play takes teenage pain seriously. Set in an empty bedroom, washed in lilac, this coming-of-age story is not just about fear of rites of passage, but also about a range of traumas: grief, eating disorders, self-harm, sexual assault. This isn’t so much the clumsy call to arms it’s advertised as, but a story of vulnerability, coated in sarcasm and bravado.
Day, who performed the play at Southwark Playhouse in 2022, was compelled to write it after reading that one in four teenage girls in Britain self-harm. Now confidently performed in the West End by Bridgerton star Charithra Chandran, the heartfelt but uneven show – directed by Georgie Staight – uses teenager Eileen’s winding journey as a platform for outrage and exhaustion.
We are introduced to Eileen’s surprisingly dry humor with her story of her sister’s death from Yorkshire pudding – or rather, we soon discover, the result of years of dealing with anorexia. When asked if she has thought about how her sister would like to be reincarnated, she immediately answers, blatantly: “skinny.” With references to Taylor Swift and the suggestion that the 90s movie Clueless “came out 60 years ago,” we never forget that this is a teenager talking to us. Chandran’s performance is believably brutal, Eileen grumpy and hopeful and eager to be noticed. When she talks about her big sister, she beams. When the struggles pile up all at once, anger simmers just beneath her skin.
Despite rolling her eyes at her unhappy parents and disappointing friends, she lets us into her trust and memories. It is the details of this, and Chandran’s energetic performance, that make the monologue so warm. But the neat staging does not challenge her. Written as a letter and placed in the pink-lit room with simple play-by-play action, it tells more than just shows, moving into a list of feel-good platitudes towards the end. Dan Light’s video has the faux-nostalgic aesthetic of a teen diary, but pre-recorded scenes do a lot of the work, depriving Chandran of the opportunity to stretch into all the roles around her. The production longs for a little more of the wildly ambitious, teen-driven nihilism promised in the title.