Runner Girl is a heartfelt, energetic solo show about a young Black woman finding her rhythm again after university. Blending poetry, music, and movement, Lara Grace Ilori mirrors her character’s emotional recovery through running.Rating
Excellent
Fresh from a sold-out run at Camden Fringe, there was a lot of love in the room last night for Runner Girl, and rightly so. Lara Grace Ilori begins centre stage, facing the audience, dressed in running gear. Recently returned from university, she’s struggling to find her identity back in South London: whether with old friends, an ex-boyfriend, or with herself. Her running, once effortless and fast on the hills of her university city, has become sluggish: each attempt sees her growing slower, unhelpfully recorded and vocalised by her running app.
What follows is a heartwarming, honest account of a young Black woman determined to find herself again, with her progress in running reflecting her journey towards better mental health. Blending poetry, spoken word (her own and her parents’), and music, Ilori makes full use of the space, sprinting up and down stairs, across the stage, and directly engaging with the audience. At times, an African drummer joins her and they dance together: grounding the piece in rhythm and heritage, at others, the raw urgency of Nina Simone’s Sinnerman underscores her rising panic. Her mother’s voice, heard across the auditorium, is projected, in written form, on a screen, the original Nigerian dialect displayed alongside its translation, adding depth and authenticity.
Plot-wise, the vocalisation of her dilemmas is well judged: emotionally rich and real, with sufficient danger to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. The gap between the told and the untold is enough to allow the spectators to work with her on her journey and faithful enough to the demographic portrayed to ring true. A particularly heart-warming section finds her articulating the difference between being comfortable in her body and not: being black in a black space and being black in a white space.
At the end, Ilori addresses the audience directly, explaining that this performance marks the end of Runner Girl’s current run before she continues refining the play. In other words, what we saw was still a work in progress, which already shines with power and promise. Nonetheless, the ending feels abrupt, with the threads around her absent mother remaining too opaque, while the introduction of therapy could be explored further. This is a piece that could easily extend to 90 minutes and still hold its audience captivated.I loved the energy and emotion of Runner Girl: the instant rapport with the audience, the smartly judged use of live and recorded music, and the understated yet effective staging. The script, as it stands, is strong; the story just needs to extend further.
Creator, Writer & Performer: Lara Grace Ilori
Movement Director: Selina Jones
Sound Designer: Iman Muhammad
Producer: Dela Ruth Hini
Runner Girl has completed its run at Peckham Theatre
