Review: Our Town Needs A Nando's

Samantha O'Rourke's new play, Our Town Needs a Nando's was written whilst O'Rourke worked in a high school and offered the opportunity for the young playwright to ‘celebrate the brilliant, bold young women’ that she met during her time at the school. The result is a play that offers some snappy, contemporary dialogue, some well-rounded young female characters and some excellent monologues for young actresses.

The play is based on five characters being set a GCSE Drama devising task that often centres on them reflecting on what is great (or, in fact, not so great) about living in the town. The content of the script does feel, at times, to be quite ‘GCSE devising’ with issue-based themes and short scenes that can lack development in places. At points, it is almost as if O'Rourke tries too hard to cover a number of particular issues, whether this be sexuality, race, sexism, abuse, unemployment, the care system, mental health, teenage pregnancy, body image, religion and eating disorders. All of the above are covered and this becomes too crowded in terms of the space allowed for the characters (and the audience) to get to grips with each challenge that they face.