Review: Instructions For A Teenage Armageddon, The Garrick Theatre

Review: Instructions For A Teenage Armageddon, The Garrick Theatre

Writing PR summaries of plays must be an incredibly difficult job, as you need to make the production sound fascinating, intriguing and appealing to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, yet at the same time you have to make sure you don’t give away the whole plot or spoil any unpredictable twists or turns.

So I’ve a lot of sympathy for whoever has such a task, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt like a production was quite so different from what was suggested than Instructions For A Teenage Armageddon, whose PR blurb reads “After her sister’s untimely death by a Yorkshire Pudding, a funny teenage misfit begrudgingly joins a flailing scout group to help her navigate the kicks and punches of adolescence with varying degrees of success.”

Now this isn’t completely inaccurate, but it doesn’t even begin to touch upon the tone and the themes explored in the play. Yes, lead character Eileen (Charithra Chandran) does initially claim her sister died because of a Yorkshire Pudding that she herself had made, but within ten minutes we learn that in fact her sister was anorexic and died of a heart attack after refusing to eat said food. But what follows is an exploration of the ways that grief, and the trauma of losing a loved one, affects a family. While Eileen attending the Scouts is used as a device to explore her character and her social life, only some of it is funny, and this is largely a work about pain, about misguided parenting, and about the way that friends may deeply damage a person.

I’m very aware that Instructions For A Teenage Armageddon is quite effective because of the unpredictable directions it takes, so I won’t comment on the narrative further, but those looking for a frothy, light comedy drama about teenage life won’t find it here. And the play has one other problem too, in that while it’s well structured and thought out, a little too much of the script borders on cliché. A lot of the metaphors are overly familiar, and while the dialogue occasionally shines, it all too often it sounds a little similar to any soap opera that has run out of steam.

There is a lot to like about this play. Charithra Chandran is astonishing throughout, in a part that makes enormous demands upon an actor, which she more than meets. Despite my reservations about the script, this should be an award-winning piece of acting. The story it tells is one that needs to be heard, and one that needs to be told more often. Chandran makes it a far more memorable and powerful piece than it otherwise might have been, which makes it feel a real shame that the script didn’t go through at least one more draft.

Writer: Rosie Day
Director: Georgie Staight
Set / Costume Design: Jasmine Swan
Lighting Design: Rory Beaton
Video Design: Dan Light

Instructions For A Teenage Armageddon is playing everything Sunday at The Garrick Theatre until April 28th.
Further information and bookings can be found here.