Writers: Samantha Dilena and Brooke McCloy
Co-Director: Natasha King
Public bathrooms are a great spot for drama, a place where all kinds of life come together often for a chat, and it’s a situational comic device used by writers from Talbot Rothwell in Carry on Screaming to Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith for the finale of their anthology series Inside No 9. Now it is the setting for Samantha Dilena and Brooke McCloy’s 45-minute play, Piss Girls, a time-leap exploration of a female friendship from the ages of 14-years-old to just after university graduation. Transferring from the 2024 Edinburgh Festival to the Hope Theatre, the writers struggle to capitalise on the comic and dramatic potential of this illustrious location.
Starting her period in the school toilets, loner Faye is frightened but doesn’t welcome Gemma’s attempts to help, although the pair soon become close friends. Over the course of nearly ten years, they share almost everything in a series of loo-based encounters. From getting ready for the school disco to grimy club toilets in their student years, the pair discover the highs and lows of life together – although maybe they haven’t been quite as honest as they think.
There is huge potential in Dilena and McCloy’s scenario, and the concept of dropping in at regular intervals on a friendship across its formative years is a strong one, especially with two young women still discovering their bodies and their place in the world. And Piss Girls covers all the topics that you would expect; first periods and sexual encounters, plenty of boy chat, clothes and the self-doubt about physical appearance that plagues teenage girls. The writers don’t add anything new to this conversation, but the closeness and candour of Faye and Gemma’s friendship largely convinces.
It is only when the writers try to give the characters, and by extension the play, further depth and meaning that its weakness is exposed, relying on dramatic revelations that are never fully seeded or explored, as well as seeking darker and darker themes to substitute fuller character scoping. With eight scenes in such a short running time, there is too little opportunity to properly explore any of these enormous and sensitive themes, such as sexual assault, paedophilia, eating disorders and suicide discussion.
All of these complex experiences are treated too lightly, a dialogic tool for Faye or Gemma to prove they have had a worse time than their friend, but without being properly embedded in their behaviour and psychology from the start. Piss Girls, despite its title, is not really a comedy but there is too little momentum across the friendship to deliver a satisfying drama either. With so many great writers using this same setting for their stories – including last year’s Boy on the Verge of Tears by Sam Grabiner – this is a missed opportunity to add to this distinctive bathroom play sub-genre.
There is energy and charismatic performances from Dilena as Faye and McCloy as Gemma, yet the play needs a firmer hand to decide what it wants to be, fill out its content and purpose, and try to better situate its characters in their lives beyond the toilet cubicle.
Runs until 5 July 2025
