Aisling Loftus impresses in this shattering revival of Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys at Nottingham Playhouse
“I met my husband in the queue to board an EasyJet flight and I have to say I took an instant dislike to the man”
Dennis Kelly’s blistering Girls & Boys received a phenomenal production at the Royal Court back in 2018. Carey Mulligan’s performance, Es Devlin’s design, Lyndsey Turner’s production, all combined to devastating effect as knowing as little as we did about what to expect really added to the impact.
Even with foreknowledge though, Anna Ledwich’s regional premiere of the play at Nottingham Playhouse carries similar strength. Aisling Loftus steps into the leading role to seduce so thoroughly that we don’t even notice the knife being slipped in later on, to comprehend just how fully we’ve been had.
There’s hints of stand-up comedy at first as this woman recounts key highlights from her life. That airport encounter that led to love, the shagging around she did beforehand, the film-making career she’s crafted for herself, the experience of being a mother to two cute kids who we don’t ever actually see.
The veneer of normality is just that though, not the full story and when it comes, the revelation hits hard and then just keeps going as the monologue whips into another gear entirely, causing us to reassess everything we’ve just heard, all the assumptions we made because they fit so neatly into the domestic dream.
Reflecting back, you see how Janet Bird’s set, Matt Haskins’ lighting work and Harry Blake’s sound hum with a note of unease, not quite anchored in reality and indeed as Loftus occasionally steps out of it, the clues are right there. The tragedy is, as Kelly adroitly observes, is that so few of us can really spot them.
