Review: Playfight

 Playfight is Julia Grogan's debut solo play, first performed at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The play revolves around friends Keira, Zainab and Lucy, as they navigate from school into adult life. Much of the action takes place under an ancient tree, symbolic of the roots they've put down together and their growth throughout their lives thus far.

As much as the girls are bound together, they are different. Keira is explosive and loud and doesn't hesitate to tell the others the details of losing her virginity on the tennis courts, filming the process and then sharing the video. She later finds herself falling into paid online sex work. Zainab is the pragmatic and methodical one of the group, who is considering her own sexuality and setting her sights on university. Lucy is a Christian, ‘like a cloud with legs’. She is naive but receptive. As the story unfolds, it is Lucy who becomes the focus as she embarks on a dangerous relationship which ultimately ends with her death, with the defence claiming a sex game gone wrong.