‘I am a trailblazer,” declares Charly – “a female drug dealer.” Phones at her hips, gunslinger style, she cranks up the Beastie Boys and prepares to boss the day from her south London flat.
In Martha Watson Allpress’s new play, Charly speaks in couplets, though promises to stop “if the rhyming thing gets boring / If I begin to hear hints of snoring.” No danger of that: Alexa Davies’ glinting performance opens in a cascade of energy, and buoyant rhymes seem just right for gobby Charly, who is chipper, self-aware, with a gleam in her eye. This work comes easily to her – “you just need gravitas and a positive attitude” – and she makes it sound ethical-ish: “I am the Santa Claus of dealing, fam.” The chiming text reassures us that everything is in place (“pun intended / I am mended”).
She hopes for a dealer’s groundhog day – wake, sell, repeat – to dull the sting of her breakup with a “trust fund darling”. Yet the rhapsodic swim of rolling sound and coloured lights in Emily Aboud’s production keep cutting out, plunging back into greyscale. We learn that Charly is unshowered, flanked by crusty laundry and has just stepped in last-night’s pizza. It’s not exactly a picture of girlboss success.
