Writer: Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
Director: James Haddrell
The rewinds are the best thing about this thriller that was first presented at Hampstead Downstairs in 2015. Dialogue from certain scenes is often repeated, once, twice, or in one crucial section of the play, three times. It adds drama to what is already dramatic play. It’s a shame that the trick is dispensed with and forgotten about in the second half.
The Wasp, a two-hander featuring Cassandra Hercules and Serin Ibrahim, echoes in a modern way the psychological thrillers of the late 1980s and early 1990s, female-led films such as Single White Female and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, silly but nonetheless entertaining. Although the genre is making a comeback with movies such as The Housemaid, Morgan Lloyd Malcom’s play still feels a little old-fashioned, but it’s no surprise that it was given the film treatment in 2024.
The closest Southwark Playhouse gets to Hollywood, however, is through Heather’s 60s-styled black and white dress. Heather, perfectly put together as her frock suggests, has come to meet her old school friend Carla, whom she’s not seen for around 20 years. Carla, pregnant with her fifth child, is chain-smoking in the café garden. Her scruffy athleisure, in contrast to Heather’s chicness, tells us that time hasn’t been good to her since her school days.
Heather has a proposition, although it takes a while for her to state what it is. At first, Carla presumes that it’s something to do with her baby or at least her startling fertility. But no, Heather doesn’t want Carla to be a surrogate mother or even adopt her yet-to-be-born child. It’s worse than that. Heather wants Carla to kill her husband.
It’s a credit to Hercules and Ibrahim that they give their all to such a ludicrous plot, which delivers twist after twist. Hercules is the chilly middle-class Heather, hand on hip, as she reminds her old schoolfriend of the past. Ibrahim is lower-class Carla, quick to be suspicious of Heather but also in desperate need of money. The two actors play against each other well.
The play gets its name from an insect mounted in a glass dome that Heather’s husband has bought off eBay. The tarantula hawk is a wasp whose larva feeds on a paralysed but still living tarantula. Of course, Carla doesn’t see the irony in this until it’s too late.
With an interval coming at the 30-minute mark and with a lot of exposition in both halves, perhaps director James Haddrell could have trimmed the script in places and given us instead a taut, but preposterous 90-minute one-act play if he wanted The Wasp to sting.
Runs until 30 May 2026 and then at Greenwich Theatre in September
