PPP: Wasps
★★★★☆ Emotional clarity
Traverse: Tue 25 – Sat 29 Mar 2025
Review by Hugh Simpson
Wasps by Cameron Forbes, the latest Play, Pie and a Pint from Òran Mór at the Traverse, is a touching coming-of-age story.
Rianne (Yolanda Mitchell) seems like your average Scottish teenager, just trying to survive high school and her phobia of wasps. She remains just invisible enough to escape being called a swot, but does enough to work towards the qualifications she wants. Except in Maths, which she just can’t understand, but at least that means she’s in the same set as the boy she fancies. But then family tragedy intervenes…
Yolanda Mitchell in Wasps. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
This one-hander is Forbes’s first professionally produced play, and is extremely promising. The dialogue is very well observed and he has created a thoroughly credible central character.
The play certainly suffers from being advertised by the Traverse as ‘blisteringly funny’. While it provides the odd chuckle, it is not really a comedy. Indeed, the play’s first, most light-hearted section is its weakest, with the rhythm of the humour seeming off and the jokes not given room to breathe.
clunky metaphors
There are also sections that make use of repetition, which do not work theatrically or poetically. The idea of the wasp phobia that is referenced in the title, moreover, occasionally jars and certainly leads to some clunky metaphors.
Yolanda Mitchell in Wasps. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
No criticism can be levelled, however, at the play’s more sombre moments. To describe what happens would be to give away an unfair amount; suffice it to say that it can get very upsetting indeed, with a level of emotional realism that is almost overwhelming.
A great deal of this is down to Mitchell’s performance, which is magnificent. She switches from Rianne to various other characters beautifully, but it is Rianne who remains the centre and who is shown with a heartbreaking clarity. Mitchell also engages with the audience with real skill.
flow
Lesley Hart’s direction gives the production a flow that is not always evident in solo performances. Gillian Argo’s design and Ross Nurney’s lighting give the stage subtly discrete areas that enhance this. The end result is a production that is poignant and affecting.
Running time: 50 minutes (no interval)
Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge St, EH1 2ED
Tuesday 25 – Saturday 29 March 2025
Daily at 1.00 pm
Details and tickets: Book here.
Yolanda Mitchell in Wasps. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
ENDS
