Girls
Three teenage girls are dancing round their bedroom under flashing rainbow lights, squealing over boys, when everything goes dark and the screaming starts. It’s a jolting opening to a play, and it sets the rhythm for everything that follows in Theresa Ikoko’s Girls. You’re laughing one minute and holding your breath the next.
Ikoko’s debut play won the Alfred Fagon Award in 2015, years before she co-wrote the BAFTA-nominated film Rocks. It follows Tisana, Haleema and Ruhab, three best friends taken from their village by militant insurgents. It’s set in Nigeria in 2014, the year Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls. Twelve years on – with around 90 of those girls still believed to be missing – director Ewa Dina brings its first UK revival to the Young Vic’s intimate Maria studio.
Captivity doesn’t stop the trio being teenagers. They act out TV shows to pass the time, handing out roses Bachelor-style, collecting awards for best performance in a hostage situation, and playing newsreaders and politicians who sip water and remind us all to vote. It’s so convincing that you sometimes forget where they are, until Elliot Griggs’ lighting snaps to black, Munotida Chinyanga’s sound design floods the room with men’s voices, or the girls jerk to attention at a noise outside, and you’re yanked straight back into the camp with them.
Hannah Akhalu’s Tisana is the dreamer, forever insisting someone will be coming to help. It’s unsettling how often she drifts off to play on her own while...
