Writer: Susannah Cann
Director: Lucinda Freeburn
Susannah Cann’s new play, performed at the Hen & Chickens theatre, is a family saga that examines the impact of sexual assault and its long aftermath. But Cann is much stronger on creating the domestic detail and characterisation, anchored by some strong performances, than tackling these bigger themes, and in trying to consider the incident from multiple perspectives, uses a time-leap structure that is too digressive. With a number of themes and subplots focusing on sex education and modern relationships, Cann’s play is sprawling, where it could be specific.
Lou (Cann) lost her job in the pandemic and now lives with her unseen mum and brother Mike (George Rowland), as well as Mike’s 10-year-old son, for whom he holds temporary custody. But when Mike rekindles a teenage friendship with Jack (Jonah Richert), it causes tension with Lou, who claims Jack raped her a decade before, and when Kelly (Rosa Samuels), Mike’s ex-girlfriend, sees his unhealthy influence on her son, Mike begins to doubt his sister.
Are Those Pyjamas New? belies its innocuous title but feels like two or three slightly different stories rolled slightly awkwardly into a single narrative and loosely connected by the consequences of sex. In what is a soap opera structure with several big strands running concurrently, the strongest scenes are those with Mike and Lou, the sibling dynamic brilliantly captured in an instantly engaging opening scene in which they bicker over breakfast, the actors conveying an easy rapport. Later, as Mike’s friendship opens old wounds, their confrontation is suitably bitter and intense as doubt and betrayal work across their conversation.
But what happens in between is too pale, and not enough time is spent building the daily life of brother and sister. The title suggests Lou is adrift – and notwithstanding a fine performance from the actor – the writing never really digs into how she spends her days or makes a strong enough connection between the sexual assault and how deeply it has affected all aspects of her life. Cann instead gets distracted by writing scenes from the summer Mike turned 18, casting back to stage information that the audience has already been told – that Kelly got pregnant and Lou was raped – and these scenes add no further valuable information to the show.
Around this, Cann includes other stories, a strand about Kelly having multiple boyfriends, of her son with Mike drawing inappropriate images and learning about sex in primary school, even of the same primary school teacher explaining heterosexual sex to the audience – the only scene like it in the play – as well as Mike and Kelly disagreeing about parenting. Yet none of these ideas is fully fleshed out enough to contribute to the central axis, whether Jack raped Lou. As a result, Are Those Pyjamas New? is both overwritten and underwritten in part.
This production at the Hen & Chickens Theatre is a little over fussy in its staging at times, actors obsessively removing and replacing their shoes every few minutes as they pretend to enter and leave rooms, but all of the performances work hard to make the slightly overburdened plot more credible.
Reviewed on 21 October 2025
