25/03/25

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Cameron Forbes’ Wasps, the latest offering from A Play, A Pie and A Pint, buzzes along busily, like its  hymenoptera lookalike. Anchored by a gutsy performance from Yolanda Mitchell, this tragic coming-of-age monologue has quite a sting in its tail (sorry, not sorry).

Teenager Rianne (Mitchell) just wants to fit in. At school, she’s perfected the art of invisibility: if she dresses right, wears her make-up exactly so, earns just enough detentions, she can move through the corridors without attracting any attention at all. But there are downsides to never being seen. For one thing, her crush, Oran, doesn’t seem to realise she exists. And for another, not even her best friend notices when her life implodes…

I’m not usually a fan of so-called inspirational quotations but “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” serves as a pretty decent précis of Wasps‘ central message. And I mean that in a good way. Rianne faces some really serious problems – including a confrontation with her spheksophobia -which she has to dig deep to face up to. And yes, she emerges battle-scarred, but at least she’s no longer desperate to disappear. She’s bolder, braver and ready to take up space. A bit more… wasp-like.

Director Lesley Hart ensures that the pace never flags, so that the play has a convincingly propulsive teenage energy, and Mitchell does a wonderful job of conveying both Rianne’s turbulent emotions and her evident disdain for many of the people in her life, evinced by her scathing impressions of them.

Gillian Argo’s set is visually arresting. I like the hexagonal construction, suggestive of a wasp’s nest, and the flickering projections of the worker wasps . However, I’m not always fully convinced by the wasp analogy; the comparison is perhaps stretched a little too thin. I’m also left with a couple of nagging questions about the plausibility of some of what occurs. (I can’t elucidate without spoilers but let’s just say that, though social care in the UK is undoubtedly in dire straits, Rianne is a vulnerable child and her situation would surely be flagged up; she wouldn’t be left to deal with it entirely alone.)

Nonetheless, this is a sprightly, engaging piece of drama, with some lively writing and a spirited delivery – a worthy addition to the PPP canon.

4 stars

Susan Singfield