Flies at Shoreditch Town Hall is a new piece from the award-winning writer of I, Joan (Shakespeare’s Globe), Charlie Josephine. Flies markets itself as a response to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, but do not expect the familiar re-writing or interpretation of a classic. Josephine’s new production, directed by Julia Head, is a web of stories about burgeoning womanhood under the male gaze, punctuated by anarchic dance sequences to pulsing afrobeats and R’n’B.

The play unfolds within a photography studio: cameras, equipment desks, and lights set up around a colorama which seems to confine the ensemble of girls. The cameras, screens and accompanying videos and projections that create a multi-media framework around the central ensemble performances are an uncomfortable, unyielding, aggressively present embodiment of the male gaze.

Under the tyranny of the ever-present camera, seven girls unpick their experiences of growing up, ricocheting from confident, confrontational, angry women to vulnerable, frightened, self-conscious girls. Charlie Josephine’s script touches on topics familiar to any female-presenting members of the audience – puberty, cat-calling, the sensuality of adolescent female bodies overtaking their own experiences and sexuality. Most of the dialogue involves anecdotes, experiences and personal opinions traded between the seven girls, and although it hits a nerve, this route into exploring the male gaze wants poetry and drama. The script explains experiences but never really digs beneath the surface.

In particular, Josephine’s dissection of the canon of English literature goes over well-trodden ground and is frustratingly reductive – to say that the entire body of literature in the English-speaking world is created by and for white men is to buy into the myth of the ‘canon’, a structure itself created by white male academics. To give airtime to this biased model is to support the silencing of generations of non-male, non-white writers, artists, creators. 

The most interesting and unique topic raised by Josephine is the idea of the queer female gaze – the discomfort and cognitive dissonance that emerges when a woman seemingly embodies the male role of viewing and desiring another woman. Again, frustratingly, Josephine – a queer writer themself - doesn’t leave much room for discussion of this topic, although it could be a whole play in and of itself.

Each member of the ensemble, made up of actors and alumni from The BRIT School, is phenomenal; both individually and in their reactions and interactions as a group. Afriya-Jasmine Nylander, Annabel Gray, Ellie-Rose Amit, Louisa Hamdi, Pearl Adams, Rosa Amos and Willow Traynor each bring an astonishing power and remarkable wisdom to their performances. The chemistry and intimacy between these cast members is touching and impossibly endearing. 

Director Julia Head, along with movement director Nandi Bhebhe, bring out the most joyful and liberated performances from this cast, full of wild and unadulterated abandon. This play reaches its apex when writing, performance and direction climax in a sweaty, revolting, punk destruction of the stage. 

There are many extraordinary elements to this new piece and flashes of sheer brilliance. It will certainly leave you with a lot to discuss upon leaving the theatre. It will be exciting to see what Boundless Theatre have to offer next – they clearly have a lot to say and some brilliant ways of saying it.

From the wild and raucous to the tender and poignant, Flies makes you want rend your garments and beat your chest. You will take the heart of this play with you, definitely worth a visit to Shoreditch.

*** Three stars

Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett

Flies plays at Shoreditch Town Hall until 11 March, with further information here.