Shoreditch Town Hall, London – until 11th March 2023
Reviewed by Celia Armand Smith
3***
Following the widely praised and trail blazing “I, Joan” at the Globe last year, comes Charlie Josephine’s new play “Flies”. Flies is inspired by and a response to William Golding’s classic 1954 novel Lord of the Flies.
Co-produced and co-commissioned by Boundless Theatre and Shoreditch Town Hall, and directed by Julia Head, the one act Flies is an electric take on the male gaze and how it impacts on young women and girls. The story is of seven girls, constantly being scrutinised by men, hitting puberty, and experiencing harassment, sexism, misogyny, pleasure, and fear. In a system that puts all the onus on women to keep themselves safe, Flies is about the stories that women tell each other, and the safe spaces and communities they seek out.
The cast is made up of Brit School actors and alumni Afriya-Jasmine Nylander, Annabel Gray, Ellie-Rose Amit, Louisa Hamdi, Pearl Adams, Rosa Amos and Willow Traynor. Many, if not all of them making their professional acting debut. The cast had a synchronicity and rhythm in both speech and movement that made them magnetic and watchable. The production is designed by Cat Fuller, and utilises the small space and in-the-round setting perfectly. A white seamless photography backdrop provides space for the cast to be the focus, plus projections are used to show a recent history of misogyny in the media. The lighting by Martha Godfrey changes with the ebb and flow in speech when the performers switch from conversation to narration to statement making including explanation from the writer in the form of “the writer would like you to know…”. Woven into the play were music and sound design by Nicole Raymond, and dance breaks with movement direction from Nandi Bhebhe. The dancing was chaotic but mesmerising, the cast filling the space and pulsing with energy.
The link to Lord of the Flies lingers above the production all the way through, occasionally making itself more obvious. Towards the end, the girls turn “feral”, destroying the set and finally escaping the watchful eye of the camera that had been recording them all along. They break free from the boundary of the white backdrop, something that they had been afraid to do, pulling each other back from the edge up to this point. Paint, costumes, and bodies are flung about, until it all comes to an abrupt standstill when a man (Stevie Raine) brings a focus back to the room.
Flies should be required viewing for all teenage boys, however I doubt many of them will see it at Shoreditch Town Hall. Having said this, it reinforced a lot of what I know and think as a woman living in the present day, and the young female cast gave me hope for the future. I also look forward to seeing them across stage and screen for years to come.