What a punchy play. Rebecca Jade Hammond has written a disturbing county lines drama that questions our stereotypes of groomers, itemises insidious techniques of manipulation and considers the neglect that leaves children vulnerable. But Hammond has also written a boisterous comedy about teenage girls who take feet pics for OnlyFans and share TikTok dance crazes and Las Vegas pipe dreams in a Swansea chicken shop. As director Hannah Noone’s well-calibrated, 75-minute production switches from humour to terror, the rush from a soundtrack featuring Charli xcx is replaced by gnawing silence.
Hot Chicks is the name of the WhatsApp group that 15-year-old besties Ruby and Kyla start with the smooth Sadie who walks into their fast food spot one day and becomes … what, exactly? She’s too old for their friend group, could just about be their mother, but assumes both roles before also becoming their boss. In front of the pair, who can’t afford a box of chicken and chips between them, Sadie casually flaunts her designer labels and brings in a bag of last season’s clothes as hand-me-downs. Ruby’s eyes widen as she picks up a sparkly jacket – soon she and Kyla are trying on Sadie’s lifestyle, too, with the rewards of drug running.
Between them, Londiwe Mthembu (Ruby) and Izzi McCormack John (Kyla) convey a spectrum of teenage innocence and experience akin to the characters in Sophie Ellerby’s slow-burning 2019 play Lit. Ruby clowns around with the abandon of a child relieved to not be at home, where the fridge is empty and her father is unpredictable. Kyla has more front, openly suspicious of Sadie (Rachel Redford) yet similarly enticed by her wealth.
At this final preview performance, the shifting dynamic between the trio is horribly compelling as Sadie flatters, cajoles, scolds and sympathises with the girls, learning intimate details of their lives in order to exploit them. Only two scenes – a command to lick the floor and a lesson in kissing – require some fine-tuning for full impact. Richard Elis is equally good as Cheney, who runs the shop, sketches in some local history and is both foil and father figure for the girls yet ultimately proves as vulnerable too.
Tic Ashfield’s sound and Katy Morison’s lighting set a stark tone, the harsh neon glare a cut-price equivalent of the Vegas glitz the girls crave. Similarly exposing is Hannah Wolfe’s traverse set design, with the glass shopfront at one end and Cheney’s counter at the other. All of it evokes a hollowness the girls feel, exacerbated by chasing likes and social media comparisons, duly exploited by Sadie.
This is an alarming drama, even if the coda to the Sherman and Grand Ambition’s co-production frames the cycle of abuse a little too neatly. The scene that immediately precedes it has a devastating power and gives another sense to the play’s “chicks”. When one of the characters makes their final exit, I was reminded of what Arthur Miller said about the end of A Streetcar Named Desire – that when Blanche leaves the stage in Williams’s play, we go right along with her.
• At Sherman theatre, Cardiff, until 5 April. Then at Swansea Grand theatre, 16-25 April.
