Sunday, 5 February 2023

Review: Thirsty, Vault Festival




Stephanie Martin’s play Thirsty, debuting at London’s first Vault Festival since Covid, is a refreshing and relatable take on dating as a queer woman in your mid-30s, and the trials and triumphs of female friendships.

Our narrator is Sara, played by the eminently watchable Louise Beresford, who is dealing with the aftermath of her break-up from her first girlfriend Alex (Rosanna Suppa) and cracks in her friendship with mother-of-two Jen (Greer Dale-Foulkes).

The gentle comedy expertly pokes fun at middle-class, millennial themes, from dating apps and veganism to meditation classes and pubic hair trends, while a playful nod to lesbian stereotypes (Sara’s date lists her interests as bouldering, rock climbing and wild swimming) elicited a knowing chuckle from the audience.

Scott Le Crass’s direction is masterful – no more so than in the ‘sex scenes’, which are notoriously tricky to get right. They are layered with meaning, with dull heterosexual sex portrayed as an uneven, heavy-handed clapping game, in contrast to Sara’s queer experiences. Her touchless kink scene with Alex involves some steamy light-dimming, while a one-night stand with another woman becomes a dance, as they lead each other around the room with just the lightest of hand touches. A failed threesome is essentially a game of Twister.

Sara’s friendship with therapy-obsessed Rosie (played lovingly by Anna Spearpoint in a flowing, hippy dress), who recounts her hilarious attempts to meet ‘The One’, is another highlight – a stoned chat about dildos had the audience in stitches. It’s harder to connect with Jen and Sara’s relationship – particularly Sara’s suggestion that Jen turned her coming out into a joke, which doesn’t quite ring true – but the touching path this story takes, as Jen struggles to adjust to the realities of her ‘conventional’ life, redeems this.

The cast excels at portraying minor characters, too, such as Matt, Jen’s feckless husband (Spearpoint looking bedraggled in a shirt) and Sara’s creepy boss John (an excellently smarmy Suppa).

Some threads of the play feel looser and less well-developed, including Sara’s relationship with her mother and her desire to self-harm, and the comical moments hit harder than the tense ones. But ultimately, much like Sara acknowledges that she now knows how a good relationship can make her feel, I know a good play when I see one. This ticks the boxes. Thirsty has the makings of something very special.

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