After wiring the critics at 2023’s Edinburgh Fringe, Lucy Hayes directs her own play, Bitter Lemons, in Park 90. Sharp and vivid, invigorating and tart, this play is a revelation.
It is a story of two women, one a high-flyer in the City, one a footballer. They are gearing up for the pitch of their lives, but things are about to get complicated.
This tough and frank play considers how difficult it is for women to make decisions about having children while still considering a career.
Angelica’s boss, a woman who seems to have pushed through the glass ceiling, longs for a baby. We don’t, of course, always get what we want.
At first it seems that Angelina is rising high as the only Black and female face amongst her peers at work. She has been given a plum opportunity to pitch to a client “full of black and brown faces”, but can she do it?
AJ, always second banana, has been selected as 1st goalie for an important cup match. It’s all she ever wanted, to please her dad, who has died, and her mum, who have never quite understood the appeal of “women running after a ball.”
Their stories seem disjointed, unconnected, as we move from one to the other, the other characters in their stories being represented by speaking into a microphone. The only props are a tinfoil curtain and two silver boxes. The floor is blue check.
AJ has had a casual sexual encounter with a barista, Angelica is living with a work colleague but no one knows about it. And their dads are both absent, Angelica not having seen hers for many years.
There are linguistic echoes between the stories, and although they are not connected at the start, it still feels as if both women have some skin in the game of the other’s tale.
Shannon Hayes’s AJ is brash, open, and energetic, with football being her main drive in life. Chanel Waddock is more reflective, careful, and cautious. Both show their skill in bringing a range of other characters to life: their mothers, the coach, the boss and the office bully.
The sound by Hattie North is excellent, full of fizzes and trickles. It adds an internal drive to the stories we see on the outside. Roisin Martindale’s set has a late reveal which finally brings AJ and Angelica together.
AJ’s mantra as goalkeeper has been ‘predict the future, but don’t anticipate it’. Bitter Lemons plays on the ‘life gives us lemons’ mantra but also focuses on how women have coped with the curve balls their bodies have thrown to them.
Like a lemon, this play is real, raw, bitter, and brash. It doesn’t shirk from hitting matters home, but Hayes adds moments of beautiful language to describe key moments and emotions.
Bitter Lemons is full of consequences and coincidences you’ll find it hard to predict.
****
Bitter Lemons continues at Park Theatre until 14 Sep with tickets here.
Production images: Alex Brenner