Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A large, hot-pink ladder dominates Hazel Low\u2019s simple set for Julia Grogan\u2019s buzzy, touching new drama Playfight (which turned heads at last year\u2019s Edinburgh Fringe). It stands in for the old oak tree under which three schoolgirls \u2014 Keira (Sophie Cox), Zainab (Nina Cassells) and Lucy (Lucy Mangan) \u2014 regularly meet. But it\u2019s also reflective of the storyline which traces the steps of the friends as they climb \u2014 and stumble \u2014 towards adulthood.When we first meet them, they are 15 and preoccupied by GCSEs (a little) and sex (a lot). Keira, the brashest of the three, has just lost her virginity to an older boy on the tennis court. Her friends are both awestruck and troubled: churchgoing Lucy\u2019s attitude to sex is complicated by worries about sin; Zainab is realising she likes girls and is scared that her rigidly disapproving mother will find out. And while Keira, who seems to have no filter, brags in detail about the momentous event, there\u2019s a violent edge to what she describes. Then she makes the fundamental error of sharing the video.We drop in on them multiple times over the next decade, as they discuss GCSE results, A-levels, university, love and commitment. Keira seems to have screwed up the most, yet she ends up pretty grounded. That\u2019s not the case for Lucy, who makes a catastrophic decision. Watching on meanwhile is Zainab, always observant, hard-working and sensible \u2014 but quietly breaking her heart in unrequited love.In some senses, Grogan\u2019s play \u2014 terrifically well performed in Emma Callander\u2019s production \u2014 feels like a sister play to Red Pitch, Tyrell Williams\u2019s drama about teenage boys. It\u2019s fizzingly funny and very frank \u2014 these girls swear and share copiously \u2014 but also tender. The passage from childhood to adulthood can be such a fragile one: the heart is readily bruised and it\u2019s easy to mess up enormously. The girls try on different ideas of what it means to be an adult \u2014 having sex, leaving home, studying, settling down \u2014 their friendship buffeted by their shifts in circumstances. And running through it are the specific dangers for young women today, such as the prevalence of violent porn.Callander\u2019s deft direction brings out the tiny shifts in the girls\u2019 body language that reveal underlying uncertainties, regrets and fears. Cox gives a firecracker performance as Keira, but moments of quiet let you see the vulnerability beneath the tough talk. Mangan has a kind of fragility and dreaminess; Cassells brings a wonderful stillness to her watchful character.You can feel the darkness underneath the play\u2019s bubbling surface and in the end it breaks out. The terrible weight of what happens is a lot for the piece to carry and it doesn\u2019t quite manage it \u2014 it feels too abrupt. But this is still a cracker: a wickedly funny, caring piece about friendship and about being young and female today.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606To April 26, sohotheatre.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A large, hot-pink ladder dominates Hazel Low\u2019s simple set for Julia Grogan\u2019s buzzy, touching new drama Playfight (which turned heads at last year\u2019s Edinburgh Fringe). It<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":276823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-276822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276824,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276822\/revisions\/276824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}