Theatre N16, 19 September – 7 October. Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
Lucy Light is a funny, feisty and life affirming new play about friendship and cancer that tackles the disease with searing honesty and irreverence.
Opening on a wave of nostalgia as BFFs Lucy and Jess celebrate the end of their GCSEs with cheap plonk and dancing to Atomic Kitten, the stark reality of Lucy’s situation is made clear by her no-nonsense description of chemotherapy, delivered straight to the audience. As Lucy wishes for her breasts to develop into C cups, her mum is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Fast forward a few years to Lucy’s 22nd birthday and Lucy’s mum has died, and she has discovered that she carries the BRCA One gene – meaning that she is 80% more likely to develop breast cancer – and makes the decision to have her breasts removed.
Sarah Milton has written two fully rounded and believable characters, with Jess and Lucy’s teenage conversations and obsessions laugh out loud familiar and cringeworthy. This makes the moments when the girls speak to the audience, telling the truth when they have just dissembled to their friend, more poignant and hard-hitting. There are lots of flippant throwaway lines about boobs and cancer, mostly from Jess, who does her best to keep Lucy’s spirits up, hiding her own confusion and rage as she tries to find hilarity in every situation. Only when she is confronted with the wait for results from an abnormal smear test does she let her mask slip, in a quietly devastating scene that Georgia May Hughes absolutely nails. The fury of their arguments is palpable and shocking, and the ease with which they eventually get over their differences rings true with Milton’s intuitive writing and Scott Ellis’s assured direction.
Hughes’ character has the energy of the Duracell bunny, in contrast to the quieter stoicism of Bebe Sanders’ Lucy. Sanders gives Lucy a truthfully fluctuating strength and vulnerability, and is positively luminous in the beautifully written final scene that will fill you with hope and get you fumbling for a tissue. The emotional integrity of Milton’s writing makes Lucy Light shine defiantly in the face of cancer – GO SEE THIS.