When I hear "toilet-based" a flush spreads across my chest, not due to some Freudian reaction that needs a chaise longue to overcome - no, in a theatrical context I have been fouled before by a loo-sical.
But the one thing we learn from history is that no one learns anything from history… or something along those lines. In this case, amnesia is a blessing.
April Hope Miller barges on stage in one of her many roles as a brash and beautiful drunken maid of honour. She has the most fun with the script and makes the already cramped crapper feel even smaller. No wonder the dynamism, it's because she wrote the damn thing.
Winning the 2025 Bitesize Award and the Fringe Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, and acting effectively within it, she breaks one of my golden theatrical rules: creatives wearing too many hats. The lack of singing is also on its side.
Sitting up, I realise I'm in for one hell of a ride. I have glimpsed the female loos - places of sanctuary and calm - briefly, as the gay best friend dragged in (sometimes against my will) for drunken heart-to-hearts or to retrieve a sobbing pal. Alcohol plus sisterhood grows a Babylonian floating garden in comparison to the silent and stinking haunted shack of the male counterpart. Do I sound jealous?
Hope Miller's script and Merle Wheldon's directing hits all the expected talking points: transphobia, sexual assault, female friendship, growing up, eating disorders, and the dreaded MEN. There is a rollicking comedy throughout that creates an ironic freshness. The inevitable twist, as the cruelty of the outside world breaks into the sanctum, lands soberingly at the end of the 75 minutes.
Ellie Wintour does well with the space: the expected porcelain thrones are there, along with graffiti, sprays, and lollipops - although throughout, the disappearance and reappearance of the imaginary stall walls is a little unclear. Jack Hathaway's strip lights and Yanni Ng's sound do well when a k-hole is experienced by one of the characters, pulling us briefly into the surreal.
Wintour's costumes are flung on backstage as the women race in and out of 16 characters and are helpful in recognising them when accents or mannerisms slip. Hope Miller knows the piece inside out and therefore does the most with her various characters. Miya Ocego is a believable popular-girl teenager and also an older doll, helping her friend explore her bisexuality.
Jazz Jenkins is the heart-breaking Billie, an ambitious journalist from the States, desperate to make it in her new city, but at what cost? Ayesha Griffiths has great comic ability with her four characters, although along with Joanna Strafford's four they do rather blur into one another. The piece is brave but not enough to theatricalise a number one, although would we want it to?
Revelling in womanhood, kindness, and the great British night out (all things that seem to be under threat), it's all fun and games until it isn't. Speaking of a world beyond the bog, it's neither preachy nor cringy, but boisterously brilliant.
Flush
Until 6 June 2026
Arcola Theatre
24 Ashwin Street
E8 3DL
