Writer: Sophia Leonie
Director: Jade Lewis
Growing up as a teenager in the 1990s was not hugely different from now, especially as illustrated in Sophia Leonie’s debut play, Millennium Girls. Perhaps the most significant difference is that not everybody had a mobile phone, so communication was by landline or telephone box. But otherwise, much was the same – especially for the young women in Leonie’s play. Sexism, racism, misogyny and the threat that predatory men pose have not changed; it’s just that we talk about such actions more freely now than we once did.
Leonie has structured the tale as a diary narrative, with Nkhanise Phiri’s modern-day teen, Jasmine, discovering her mother’s journals and exploring the stories within. Leonie flits between playing Jessica both as an adult, fretting as she packs to leave after breaking up with Jasmine’s father, and as a Nineties teen who initially moves to an estate in Finsbury Park from Brighton. Jessica’s initial struggles to fit in soon fade away once she is adopted into a friendship group dominated by Unique Spencer’s Latisha – very much this play’s idea of Mean Girls’ Regina George, if she were into garage and raves.
Together with Tamara Camacho’s Chanel, the trio of girls start to navigate attention from boys. As teenage Jess, Leonie delivers several narrative extracts containing sharply observed details about how young women have to navigate life under a perpetual male gaze.
And yet there is a sense of teenage invincibility that leads the girls into dangerous situations, including a house party with 20-year-old men in which Jessica has a narrow escape with a guy who wants to pressure her into sex. Leonie’s descriptions of the encounter are vivid, placing us in the room with her.
That ability to bring us into Jessica’s fears is amplified later when, after accepting a lift home from Latisha’s friend, he proceeds to sexually assault her in his locked car. Jessica’s narration subtly and astutely switches from talking in the present to the past tense, the character dissociating from the horrors inflicted upon her.
The impact that the attack has on both her and her teenage daughter, reading this from her diaries, is profound. Teenage Jessica finds all sorts of ways to tell herself that she deserved what happened to her, while in the modern day, Phiri’s Jasmine finally opens up to her mother about some of the misogynistic behaviour she is facing. With photos she sent to her boyfriend now flying around the school on Snapchat, it seems as if all that has changed in the intervening decades is that the number of ways misogyny corrupts has increased.
Elsewhere, Leonie’s script bounces between neatly observed conversation and swathes of pedestrian dialogue that feel like placeholder text lifted from low-quality soap operas to be rewritten later.
That’s frustrating, because when Leonie finds her voice, Millennium Girls flies. For all its occasional moments when it stutters, the entertainment, effectiveness and specificity of the sequences that work make the work an effective showcase for Sophia Leonie’s writing abilities.
Continues until 31 May 2025
