Writers: Georgina Housby and Sam Dinnage
Director: Sam Dinnage
Spare Room is an early contender for the best show of Camden Fringe. Wickedly funny, this examination of masculinity is cleverly economic.
Blue Duck Theatre Company’s play starts with Jodie moving to a house full of boys. She thought that the ‘Mary’ mentioned in the room-to-let ad would be a woman, but it turns out that Mary is Richard, who is described by one of the boys as having a ‘sprinkling of autism’. She arrives in the morning to find the boys slumped out on the sofa and the floor, surrounded by bottles and plastic cups. Jack is the only one awake, and he is eating a bowl of Wotsits drenched in out-of-date milk.
The boys’ banter is not PC, but it is hilarious. Calling each other “gay” at every opportunity and then bickering about who will sleep with their new housemate, the young men – students and university drop-outs – feel frighteningly real, never toning it down in Jodie’s presence.
The way the boys interact with each other is similar to recent films by Argentine director Marco Berger, especially 2022’s devastating Horseplay, where homoeroticism and homophobia come dangerously close. Like the boys in the film, Spare Room’s housemates spend nights drinking and gaming on the PlayStation. Various young women turn up in the middle of the night.
Jodie, escaping her alcoholic mother, finds herself becoming one of the boys, drinking and talking ketamine. In a series of beautifully directed short scenes, we see her attempts to keep up with her housemates, who eventually don’t bat an eyelid when she vomits in the wastepaper bin. Jodi, played by co-writer Georgina Housby, is in almost every scene. In one of the few scenes she isn’t in, we see the usually arrogant gym rat Alex (Will Meadowcroft) be kind and supportive to Mary (a wonderful turn by Luke Dyer), suggesting that there is a glimmer of hope for these boys after all.
Only the sullen Jack (an understated Matt Underhill) looks out for Jodie as she spirals into self-abuse, while good-time Ben ( a raucous Tom David Griffiths) always wants more alcohol. In the smallest cameo, director Sam Dinnage plays the predatory Callum, a mate who turns up to the house parties that are thrown every night.
The shocking end – based on true events – elicits gasps from the audience, and the ambiguous final scene demonstrates some top-notch writing by Housby and Dinnage, ensuring that there is no easy resolution. Blue Duck Theatre, comprised of 14 graduates from The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, has delivered an absolute hit.
Runs until 3 August 2025
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
