Sharp, funny bathroom scenes shine at Soho Theatre, but thinly written boys and lopsided pacing drain energy from a hyped Gen Z sex comedy.
Virginity, and the loss thereof, is a big money game.
Miriam Battye’s playful script initially lowers the stakes when sweet 16-year-old pals Jess and Chloe convene in the bathroom ahead of their big night out at Lizard Lounge.
The plan is simple, pull a boy then back home sans conquests for chicken dippers and a sleepover.
No reason to be scared. Boys are, after all, “just us, flattened out”.
But the arrival of Anya (Zoe Armer) changes everything. She’s in the year above Jess (Ella Bruccoleri) and Chloe (Anushka Chakravarti) when such gradations matter. Also, she’s made the biggest leap of all and, get this, she’s had sex, actual sex.
The virginal duo becomes a trio with the arrival of perplexed Phoebe (adorable scene stealer Molly Hewitt-Richards) and they all have many questions for Anya – and even more reservations.
Where it works
Rosie Elnile’s set is split in two, the bathroom on the left and on the right the living room. This is where Chloe’s drippy brother Joel (Ragevan Vasan) is hanging out with cool-as-they-come gym buddy and dullard Mel (Alec Boaden) playing video games.
More on them later, but for now, the mere presence of boys in the house and the hint that Jess may have a crush on her bestie’s dweeb bro adds immediate tension.
Anya changes the rules of the game: Boys in the living room. Let’s get to work, girls. These days we can have it all, no consequences.
In Battye’s twinkling play these bathroom scenes are a joy and a highlight. At one point the girls are all crammed in the bath, as if this is their life raft on a sea of hormones, confusion, shame and uncertainty. The three innocents stared doe-eyed at Anya and each must figure out if losing the big V is a big thing, a small thing, nothing at all or a necessary evil.
The writer has this gossipy girl talk just right and it’s exquisite.
In contrast, what we find in the living room is an absence of anything remotely resembling a boy. Boys don’t talk like girls – they banter, the belittle, they boast – but Joel and Mel’s rare and gnomic utterances are dead on arrival.
The drama is entirely uninterested in the plausibility of the jock and the spineless milksop as friends and Mel’s mini info dump about why modern girls are to blame for modern boys is spurious and inert.
Where it doesn’t work
Perhaps Battye is making a point about boys as objects, as alien creatures. But the half and half staging suggests otherwise. On one side, we have natter and nuance, on the other, lumpen lads soaking up real estate.
That is one letdown. The other comes with director Jaz Woodcock-Stewart’s curious pacing. The whole thing is an elongated 85 minutes but could have been a swift and much funnier 65. There are enough comedy smash cuts to move it into the territory of screwball sex comedy – but the director clearly pines for Pinter.
When the girls take over the living room, they suffer from the same torpor, and the pacing never recovers. Yes, there are darker elements at play here, and painful confessions, but they are low-key and strangely lost.
- Review – Rob Auton’s shamanic optimism brings warmth to winter nights
- Review – Gerry & Sewell’s raucous rise curdles into excess
There has been much hype about this play, selling it as a kind of bawdy romp for Gen Z. Battye means to say something meaningful about sex and identity and for that – and for the laughs – she deserves all the plaudits.
But the play is strangely hurried in the key moments and painfully slow elsewhere, making for a night that is as unbalanced as teetering Phoebe on vodka and lemonade.
The Virgins plays at Soho Theatre until 7 March 2026.
This review first appeared on The Spy In The Stalls.