Type – Dramedy, Feminist, Hot-Topic
If you liked – Fleabag
Eggs: Friendship, fertility, and freaking the f*ck out, it’s all here in a sincere two-hander
First performed at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Florence Keith-Roach‘s Eggs, paints a very real, very sincere story of female friendship in the modern world of two very different women. I hope you like eggs, because the motif is featured a lot throughout this rather…egg-cellent production.
Girl One (Madeline Flood) is an unabashedly bold and brazen struggling artist, unafraid to speak loudly about her sex life, her depression, or regular use of sex toys in public. Girl Two (Madeleine Wilson) holds a steady office job with a creepy boss, and a relatively steady boyfriend – so naturally now’s the time to start thinking about a baby. Or so the script of life says.
As the individual scenes play out, it becomes harder (for us and for the two girls) to understand why these two are friends. Is it the shared loss of their best friend Rose, bringing their trio down to a duo? Is it their love of nineties music? Or is it the inescapable reality that they each desire what the other has but can never admit it?
Megan Sampson directs the piece smoothly as we venture in and out of Girl One’s spiralling singledom, and Girl Two’s equally spiralling grip on the story given to her by societal norms. As the dreaded 30s loom ever closer for the two, the fork in the pairs’ road becomes more apparent. The more the two become so focused internally on their own lives, the less they listen to each others own concerns – they’re ultimately fighting against the present stream of what society expects of them.
Both Flood and Wilson have a palpable believability in their friendship. Despite some stumbling dialogue, and clunky movement, you really root for the pair as you see the cracks in their friendship start to spread. Each play their parts well, avoiding the dangers of caricature they could so easily have fallen into.
Flood plays Girl One with gleeful chaos, leaning into her blasé attitude toward life and passion for her art. Her humorously recurring hangups on being born through IVF are a psychoanalyst’s wet dream, with Keith-Roach offering some rather existential tidbits in her writing I’d never considered. Wilson’s opposing force is uppity but never snooty, awkward but never embarassing. You can see that Girl Two is playing her role in society the best way she knows how, and yearns to keep her longest relationship on a stable path.
Izzy Morrissey‘s lighting design utilises the set of the earlier show at the Old Fitz, Catch As Catch Can (which I highly recommend checking out before it closes this weekend) effectively to create a variety of settings in space. The limitations means that the production is played safe, with Lily Moody‘s set and props remaining limited, and Maddy Briggs sound design doing the rest of the heavy lifting to offer audience sensory clues to grab onto in which we build the world of Eggs.
The title is called Eggs, so, naturally, the crux of the play’s shell eventually comes into view. Keith-Roach’s discussion of abortion is unashamedly forthcoming. There isn’t a didactic approach here, with the characters trying to persuade audiences one way or the other, instead we’re given a reality of an unwanted pregnancy. Kite Studios have seen the stories in the headlines and placed a very well-timed production in our laps on which to speak to the conversation. We are given a very natural reality. There’s no great philosophical debate here, there’s just two women, their bodies, and their choices.
Hearing an audience member’s rather shocked tutting at Girl One’s brazen commentary on abortion was just the icing on the cake in one of the play’s climactic scenes.
Is Eggs worth seeing in Sydney?
This is a witty and charming story of female friendship, with direction that plays it naturally, refusing to lean into the didactic. Armed with a leading duo that have believable chemistry, there’s a cracking amount of j(y)okes to be had in this. I highly recommend doing the double!
Tickets and Practical Info for Eggs in Sydney 🎟️
Old Fitz Theatre, Woolloomooloo
24 – 30 October
Tickets: https://www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/eggs
Production Company: Kite Studios
Playwright: Florence Keith-Roach
Director: Megan Sampson
Producer: Karrine Kanaan
Assistant Producer: Celine Widjaya
Lighting Designer: Izzy Morrissey
Set/Props & Costume Designer: Lily Moody
Sound Designer & Composer: Maddy Briggs
Stage Manager: Alex Liang
Producing Support: Izabella Louk
Accent Support: Rosalind Nugent-Williams
Poster Artist: Anupa Ranchagoda
Cast (of 2): Madeline Flood, Madeleine Wilson
