Bitter Lemons by Lucy Hayes. Park 90, Park Theatre, 13 Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, London until 12 September 2024.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“Challenging play brilliantly performed.”

Festooned with rave reviews from a stint on the Fringe at Edinburgh and Bristol where it originated this is splendidly performed and written, but is one of those feminist works, which. while I can admire, I did not much enjoy. Hayes has written two monologues which are delivered at the same time with the characters sometimes using microphones – but they do not interact until right at the very end. Angelina (Shannon Hayes) works in an investment bank, is ambitious, has an appalling male boss and is well aware she is there as the token person of colour for the benefit of clients. AJ (Chanel Waddock) is a goal keeper, a sort of Lioness, facing up to the death of her father, who encouraged her in her career, and her mother coming to see her play in a crucial game, her first in goal. Both women are pregnant, both have decided to have an abortion. Hayes has stuffed it with countless themes – women's right to decide what they want for their own bodies, the patriarchy of men, abortion, pregnancy and relations with parents. It all gets rather overwhelming at times but it certainly achieves its ends under her direction. AJ has invited her mother to see her debut and is suffering from the practice shots she is coping with, which is not going well and is not helped by her condition, while Angelina has to cope with Gary, her creep of a boss, while putting herself across to those clients as someone they can trust in her own right. When the finally meet in the clinic it is to discover they share the same surname and possibly more but little is made of it. The journey there is what matters rather than what comes after. The plaudits it has received are deserved and the fact it is not a play for me is neither here nor there. Hayes and Waddock are magnificent, cope with the intricacies of performing two stories at the same time beautifully and it is a stimulating evening by any standards.

Cast

Shannon Hayes – Angelina.

Chanell Waddock – AJ.

Creatives

Director [ Lucy Hayes.

Set & Costume Designer – Roisin Martindale.

Lighting Designer – Ed Saunders.

Sound Designer – Hattie North.