Every Queer woman I know has wondered the same thing at some point: was I in love with my high school best friend? Sometimes this is felt in the moment, but more often, from my experience, it’s a reflection, pondered about many years after leaving school. Playfight is a story about that feeling, the knotty ball of anxiety between teen friendship, lust, jealousy and love.
The play, written by Julia Grogan and currently on at the Soho Theatre in London, centres on the lives of three girls, Zainab (Nina Cassells), Keira (Sophie Cox) and Lucy (Lucy Mangan), from year 11 to their mid-twenties, who meet under a tree, represented on stage by a large pink step ladder. Zainab is the clever one with strict parents, who realises she’s a Lesbian after masturbating to a TV show about Anne Boleyn. But she’s seen her mother call a Lesbian couple a “fucking disgrace” before, which makes coming out a little complicated. Lucy is a Christian, who battles between her conservative faith and curious teen libido. At one point she considers leaving the church after having an orgasm, and admits she’s been fingered at the back of the church hall. Keira is a loudmouth going through a disruptive home life, who hides her trauma with Jay from the Inbetweeners-style bravado.
Grogan’s writing is charged with the intensity of teenage feeling, as well as its folly. The play opens with Keira describing losing her virginity to an older boy. Her desire to be the most experienced masks the exploitation of it all – her being underage, him “smacking” her in the face, the alcohol. When he takes his own life after the encounter is reported, she is left with a misplaced guilt that never shifts, and shadows the rest of her life. But she also provides the comedic glue this otherwise depressing show desperately needs. “It’s how they control us,” she says, when the school blocks porn over the wifi. When she starts an underage OnlyFans in sixth form, her friends, and the audience, feel a swell to stop and protect her, while also laughing along at the ridiculousness of the situation – “will someone sh*t in this jar?” she shouts, exasperated and desperate.
Meanwhile, Zainab and Lucy circle around each other as their feelings grow stronger. But fear also makes them retreat. One fears rejection while the other feels the weight of her world crashing down if she were to give into her feelings. Is this just a game they’re playing?
As the trio navigate their various feelings for one another over the course of the ten year period, they consider what could be if they were all a little bolder or circumstances were different. But they are also bound by the paths that seem pre-determined by fate. Is pain really avoidable, or just sort of what happens?
You can see Playfight at the Soho Theatre until 26th April 2025. Get tickets here.
