Review: Random Selfies, Ovalhouse - life through the eyes of a 10-year-old city girl
22/03/2019
Kenny's writing is a window into a world of a 10-year-old where life is a series of fine balancing acts.
Random Selfies by award-winning writer Mike Kenny (The Railway Children) is the story of child loneliness in a busy world.
Loretta or Lola as she prefers to be called is 10-years-old, lives with her mum and annoying younger brother in a ground floor flat in a big city.
She's finally got her own room, her older sister having left home - the circumstances of which Lola seems reluctant to talk about - but her privacy isn't complete because her mum won't knock.
Performed by Christina Ngoyi, Lola's bedroom forms the backdrop for the piece, her window is a screen on which graphics and animation depict some of her thoughts, ideas and flights of fantasy.
Pressures to be a certain way
People tell her to be herself but how can she be when she's bombarded with advice about what she should wear, say and do.
Kenny's writing is a window into a world of a 10-year-old where life is a series of fine balancing acts.
Lola wants to be seen and included, invited to the popular girl's party but doesn't want to stand out in a way that means she's picked on.
She wants privacy, her own space and to be left alone but gets lonely.
Looking through a different lens
Between Maya, the new girl at school and an asylum seeker, and Mrs Thing who lives upstairs Lola learns to look beyond the selfies and the Facebook 'likes' and see herself through a different lens.
Adult's playing children is tricky, it can come across as a caricature but Ngoyi's performance is convincingly natural.
Random Selfies is a warm, funny and perceptive piece and I'm giving it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.
It's 55 minutes long and is at the Ovalhouse Theatre until 4 April.
You might also like:
Review: My White Best Friend, Bunker Theatre - clever, fresh and provocative ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
From the archive: Review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time first run in the West End (you can still catch it now at the Piccadilly Theatre)