It’s during a history lesson, when the teacher is talking about the suffragettes, that a picture of Scarlett, completely naked, is sent to the phones of everyone in the school. Will the other girls, who Scarlett has known since she was in reception class, throw a protective ring around her? Not likely. They are too busy bitching about her body, comparing the size of their own breasts against hers, and denouncing Scarlett as a slut.
When a naked picture of the boy everyone fancies also starts circulating, the reactions – from boys and girls – are very different. His body is admired and he’s seen as a bit of star. Because a boy who sleeps around is a stud, and girls like Scarlett are sluts. They’re not girls like us. And they have to be punished.
A chorus of six young women offer a glimpse into the lives and minds of teenage girls in Esther Baker’s flinty, sparkily performed staging of Evan Placey’s eye-opening, often uncomfortably honest play. It deserves to be widely seen by teenage audiences. And by their parents too, who will probably flinch.
It celebrates the pleasures of friendship, but also the pressures and perils that come with puberty. Scarlett was always low down in the pecking order (there’s a David Attenborough-style explanation of the shocking viciousness of hens), so it was a surprise to everybody when she proved unexpectedly popular with boys in secondary school.
Placey’s play explores much more than Mean Girls syndrome. It’s viciously funny, but the bitchiness is grounded in the girls’ insecurities, and it poses an urgent question: how did the generations of women who fought for the vote, equality of opportunity, rights in the workplace and for control over their own bodies give birth to daughters who are so insecure, judgmental and unsisterly?
Maybe change starts with plays like this.
• Until 22 November. Box office: 020-7645 0560. Venue: Unicorn theatre, London.
