Review: The Lads Play, Hen and Chickens Theatre

When four former school friends reunite at a funeral, past events re-emerge that lead to questions surrounding what really happened at a party many years previously. It’s a familiar story, and while such stories are vital as we seek to solve the ever-present issue of consent, complicity and toxic masculinity, in its current format The Lads Play’s approach to the topic, at times, feels rather off. 

Set at the wake, the four friends reminisce, banter and bicker upstairs at the local pub. There’s a satisfying familiarity in their interplay; it’s easily believable that they have grown up together. All the usual group dynamics are there, some relationships within the quartet stronger than others. Maybe there’s a little too much bantering, as it means that the core of the story is hardly touched upon for some time, deferring it to the second half. Writer Tim Charles seems to want to tease what is to come as he builds up the four characters with very subtle hints of “that night.” Except it doesn’t quite achieve that; each character instead feels as if certain boxes needed to be ticked to ensure all the vital characteristics are covered, leaving us with rather obvious stereotypes. 

Even when the core of the story does begin to be revealed, there’s an attempt at misdirection which leaves a further sense that the men are important and the women not. The sole female of the cast, barmaid Susan (Sorcha Morgan), is hardly used, there to keep the drinks flowing, left sidelined, almost as an afterthought, as if to shout “look, we do have a female in our cast!” It would fail the Bechdel Test, and given the topic, maybe that’s not a good thing. 

Where the play does do a great job is in its use of the tight space that is the Hen and Chickens stage. With the main space dominated by the table around which much of the conversation happens, the use of the sides helps create a sense of separation, taking us out of the main space for more private moments between characters. It’s further aided by clever movement of actors on and off stage to take us into those different parts of the pub, resulting in the space feeling much bigger than it really is. Although the director really should find a way to avoid the overlong monologue around which the play is clearly set becoming a direct-to-audience speech that, once again, takes away from the realism the play is trying to create. 

There is plenty to like about The Lads Play, so it’s hard to quite put my finger on why it leaves me with such an uneasy feeling at the end; not uneasy about its subject, which should be the case, but uneasy at how it actually presents it. Yes, the first thing any play should do is entertain, but when you are setting your play around a dark theme, it also has a duty to ensure it does not use that as a cheap tool simply to create drama, and maybe that is where the problem for me arises. 

This is my second play of the week where the issues of toxic masculinity, rape and consent are at its very heart, but whereas the other (Spare Room) manages to tackle them as an integral part of the show, The Lads Play uses them almost as an afterthought, purely as an attempt to shock. Much like the characters, it feels written to tick boxes without the required nuance to tackle such a heavy subject.

Written by Tim Charles
Directed by Matt Palliser-Kehoe

The Lads Play has completed its Camden Fringe Performance