“The play honestly takes you back to high school, not through cliché but through detail.”
There is a moment in Lambslaughter at Playhouse East when you realise you are not simply watching a play about adolescence but reliving it. Set in a Catholic girls’ school in Merseyside in 2013, the piece written and directed by Olivia Revans captures the strange intensity of teenage consciousness with an honesty that feels almost documentary. It does not sentimentalise girlhood. It remembers it.
The recognition begins early. The instant one of the girls is seen reading Twilight, the atmosphere locks into place. The references to tweets, not X, the breathless digital exchanges, the way online drama bleeds into real life, all land with unnerving accuracy. This is not nostalgia filtered through adulthood. It feels observed from within.
At its centre are Jade and Chloe, played with remarkable precision by Freya Jones and Erin Riley. Their friendship is volatile, tender, competitive, devoted. They do not perform teenage girls; they inhabit them. The rhythms of their speech overlap and collide. The insecurity is palpable. The sudden cruelty feels authentic rather than theatrical. You are taken back to classrooms, corridors, and constant drama.
One of the production’s most intelligent devices is its parallel with The Crucible which the girls study in school. The resonance between Miller’s hysteria and the social tribunal of teenage life is deftly handled. The academic text becomes a mirror for their own emotional trials. It is a sharp structural choice and one of the evening’s strongest elements.
Not everything carries equal weight. The inclusion of a doll: puppet, which appears intermittently, feels ornamental rather than revelatory. It never quite earns its place in the narrative. A subplot involving Chloe’s dalliance with an older man is introduced with promise but not sufficiently explored. It slips from view long enough that when it resurfaces, it feels faint. The play also tackles an ambitious number of issues within a compact running time. Some threads would have benefited from greater depth and breathing room, even if it’s at the risk of removing others.
Still, the performances anchor everything. Louie Threlfall, as Mr Barrett, avoids caricature in portraying the uneasy teacher dynamic. The ensemble maintains a tone of startling realism throughout. The acting is extraordinary in its restraint and credibility. Nothing feels forced. The emotional stakes feel lived rather than performed.
What lingers is the sincerity. The play honestly takes you back to high school, not through cliché but through detail. Through books half hidden in backpacks. Through social media anxiety. Through the intellectual texts that quietly shape how young people understand themselves. It is messy, ambitious, occasionally uneven, but ultimately deeply affecting.
Lambslaughter is showing at Playhouse East in London as part of the February Fringe, with performances running 24 to 26 February 2026. Tickets are available here.