Writers and Directors: Tabitha Kenworthy and Nadia Heap
Genevieve, who is 15, sees herself as a writer. Her forte is fan fiction, and she is hiding in a school changing room because she has lost her all-revealing notebook. So, from that vantage point, she tells us about her concerns – especially the four girls who don’t understand her and the boy, Jack, she fancies.
Tabitha Kenworthy, who is a convincing, naturalistic actor, presents three of these herself, so it feels like a one-person play – except that, 35 minutes in, Nadia Heap appears as Lara, who briefly takes Genevieve to task for self-absorption. This structure makes the play seem uneven.
There seems to be a fashion for plays with a menstruation theme at present, such as Nilgün Yusuf’s much better play Nine Moons, which played at the Old Red Lion and the Lion and Unicorn earlier this month. Genevieve has yet to menstruate and is desperate to reach this adolescent right of passage, so it’s an obsession which she returns to frequently, leading to a mildly amusing but predictable ending.
There is a lot of wry humour in this play because it’s well-observed. Any teenage girl who noted down her sex fantasies and inner thoughts and then lost them would be stressing like mad. And the writing is very apt. It isn’t, however, the comic romp which the young, support-your-mates, laugh-at-every-line audience wanted it to be.
There is also an issue with length. Changing Rooms is billed at 60 minutes. In fact, it runs barely 40 minutes and feels very slight.
Reviewed on 25 November 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Slightly amusing
