Latch is an excellent play delving into the minds of the contemporary teenage girl
A 60-minute slumber party which serves as a reminder of what it was to be a teenage girl, Camden Fringe show Latch at The Courtyard Theatre delivers story after story of three girls grappling with the darker side of growing up but struggles to find a narrative arc to carry it through.
The play wastes no time establishing its context. Three friends — Minnie (Tallulah Pollock-Taylor), Jess (Rosie Pike), and Sienna (Ellie May Todd) — are having a parent-free night in Minnie’s bedroom, drinking and playing games while they wait for invited boys to arrive. The boys become a Waiting for Godot-style device throughout the play, with “Where are the boys?” resetting conversations each time they run their course.
The dialogue between the girls is impressively organic. It’s easy to forget we’re not watching three actors in a black-box theatre and instead are fly-on-the wall observers of the night. Jokes about drinking and wanting to play more daring games quickly explore issues of classism, mental health, and sexualisation without making the topic transitions overly clunky or stilted. Even I couldn’t help but wince with the actors at Jess’s blunt question towards Sienna concerning her mother’s employment status. A direct and ill-considered question fitting of the character allowing the show to slice into the girls’ differing classes.
But the ease of the writing to stroll from one conversational strain to the next results in a meandering narrative arc. The girls jump from one childhood recount to the next with their stories carrying very little consequences for the play’s momentum. One girl’s revelation of mental health struggles receives reactions of disbelief and sympathy from her friends, before being acknowledged with therapy speak and then never broached again for the remainder of the play.
The show only remembers the needs for stakes in its last twenty minutes as it zeroes in on Sienna’s obviously abusive relationship which has been hinted throughout. But just as it seems like one of the girls will undergo an epiphany the writing chooses to leave the play on an unsatisfying cliffhanger. Sure, they’re teenagers having a party and not every conversation needs to be life changing. But an hour with these characters into what makes them tick and we leave with no different to how they began is a stark narrative issue.
What the plot lacks in development, the actors more than make up for in personality and humour. The trio rather resemble a British-style Plastics gang. Pollock-Taylor is delightfully sassy as queen bee Minnie, radiating confidence and weaselly smarts which you love and hate in both parts. Pike is outrageous and outspoken as Jess that I couldn’t help but enjoy every second of her performance even as she blurted out thoughts most of us would censor. Todd’s Sienna was sweetly sensitive and unconsciously naïve, and I sympathised with her longing for the simplicity of childhood.
The trio’s clearly defined characterisations created a fun and realistic dynamic to their friend group which was a pleasure to watch. Their performances as teenagers were believable, however could err a little on the parodic in moments of emotional distress.
Oriel Echo’s set design, as they transported a teenage girl’s bedroom onto a little black box stage, can only be described as immersive. An explosion in pink; layers of blankets, hair products, and a hanging Rolling Stone magazine cover featuring Lana del Rey next to a delicate drawing of ballerinas. This was obviously a bedroom which a girl was growing up in.
Latch is an excellent play delving into the minds of the contemporary teenage girl- making you nostalgic for your own days and relieved they’re behind you- with wonderfully sharp and detailed performances from its actors. Along the way it manages to touch on issues with real world weight to them which graze its maturing characters. I only wish we got to see these girls grow more before bidding them goodnight.
This show runs at X until Y. Tickets here.