We’re in the town of Dunningham, near York, for Aisha Josiah’s play Dickless, a drama of slander, blackmail, and violence in one night.
Saff (Rosaleen Cox) is a typical young woman from this rough world. Her home circumstances are precarious, her love life promiscuous, but dominated for now by Oli (also Cox), a typical lad.
This one night, Saff is roped into revenge on behalf of a mate who has been misgendered, ‘Saint Flick’, while Oli wrestles with both his male identity and a secret blackmailer.
Dickless is a rough and visceral play with action and language to match. As a solo performance in two halves, Saff’s story feels stronger and is boosted by a vein of black comedy.
Supporting characters are expertly drawn: the local lothario Smith Henry, whose strut and misogynist attitude makes him deeply unsympathetic; the gobby pre-teen who waits outside the off-licence for a drink.
Plotwise, Oli’s story is interesting, but it feels it needs a bit more space. There is violence against both humans and animals throughout Dickless, fully described in gory detail.
Where Josiah’s writing missed for me was in making Saff and the other girls fully dimensional beings with more than just sex, booze, and violence on their minds. The script is full of sharp detail around them.
Now and then we’re close to chipping at Saff’s veneer, but it never quite comes off; there’s more meat to Oli and the story of his “lad/lass” condundrum but that’s hard to reconcile with his gay slurs.
Emily Aboud directs Dickless and uses the Riverside’s Studio space without set or props. Mime and sound bring us into rooms, outside in the dark, into the scenes where fights start and betrayals happen.
I counted at least nine locations, inside and out, which Jovana Backovic’s sound design and Sammy Emmins’s lighting brought to life.
Cox’s performance was strident and powerful throughout, putting across a wordy script and capturing the fake bravado of those whose appearances are everything.
Dickless, which has now finished its run at the Riverside Studio’s Bitesize Festival, is a powerful lens on the working-class north, but feels like a 90 minute play straining at an hour.
***