The Year 9 Play ‘Flesh!’ Serves Up a Tasty Treat - If You Can Stomach It!

How to describe the Year 9 play? Well, let me see. It’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ meets ‘Love Island.’ No, think more ‘I’m a Celebrity’ (it certainly serves up a particularly gruesome Bushtucker Trial!) mixed with ‘Jumanji’. Or should I say ‘Lost!’ meets ‘The Hunger Games’?  Only with cabaret tables.  And teenage philosophers in sparkly trilbies who debate life, the universe and everything.  Imagine a teenage Nietzche having a chat with adolescent Darwin about tween Tennyson’s ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’ - with lots of LOLs, and an ending that will put any teacher off planning a school trip. Ever.  Again!  

And you’re still not close….

OK, let me try again.  So, a group of teens find themselves marooned on an island – phoneless, feckless, and flipping confused. Think Bronze DofE goes dystopia:  there are no leaders looking out for these lost teens, no google maps, no GPS trackers - no way out.  Short-term memory loss brought on by the mysterious mist that pervades the island means they don’t remember their own names.  Or how they got here.  Or if they know each other. So why are they here? How do they get out of here?  And how are they going to survive if they can’t?

It all starts of fine (sort of!) I mean, it’s all ‘totes emosh’ and ‘O.M.Gosh!’ but no one’s gonna – like - die, right?  Cool dude Stan Thomas swaggers like ‘Bill and Ted’ and assures everyone, ‘It’s all G!’ Sam Simmons plays the maths geek, a man with(out) a plan who tries – and fails – to think logically.  Kai Dodgson plays the smug brainiac philosophising about quantum physics in an attempt to find a rational explanation for their predicament.  Wren Man plays the smart cookie who’s clever on paper but can’t figure out this particular equation.  Madison Hicks plays the Insta- Queen (#unique!); Evie Shepperdson, the exam factory gal; Elliot Terry the eternal optimist (at least to start with); Sophie Hinds the worry wart; and Aleena Jahanzab the fatalist. But positive and practical Isabella Gale is certain there must be a way out. So intrepid Rebecca Jellis turns Becky Adlington and attempts to make a swim for it, only to return wet and worried.

What exactly is going on?

Oh, and then there’s the fact that they seem to have been separated into two teams. Red and Green.  But why? This is Year 9 interform athletics but with a dark twist as our two tribes go to war trying to figure out what divides them – race? gender? (‘Duh - gender doesn’t exist – it’s an artificial construct’!) political allegiance (‘does anyone – like- actually care about trees and stuff?’) intelligence (‘can you remember what you actually got in your exams)? Or is it all just arbitrary?  A way to divide and rule?  But who’s pulling the strings in this particular social experiment?

There’s a bit of budding romance: Lola Claypan, the wannabee youtube star, tells Ava Shaw’s social media cynic ‘You look good enough to eat’ (spoiler alert!)  And the lost generation philosophise about all the big questions – what separates us from animals?  Is killing ever ethical?  And what’s better:  FOMO or POMO? They debate cancel culture, the existence of gender, environmental issues and ‘adulting’, but in the end it turns out they have zero survival skills. This might be ‘I’m a Celebrity’ but there are no trials  to sing for their supper, and they aren’t getting out of here.

So as hunger pangs kick in it all goes a bit ‘Hunger Games’.  Food is on everyone’s minds but where do you draw the line?  What’s prey and what’s ‘no way’? Juliette Gooberman Hill plays the eco-warrior into veganism, the environment and moustaches (in that order); Chris Cooper plays the tortured (semi) vegetarian with a weakness for bacon and a propensity to panic attacks; there’s a fruitarian and a pescatarian – but they all agree that food is, well, sort of essential.

So when Lila – the vain vegan wannabee falls out of a tree (if a girl falls out of a tree in a forest and nobody sees, did she fall or was she pushed?) it looks like she might be served up for supper.  Pack mentality kicks in and gradually the lost generation access their dark side. Theo Fallon plays the practical pragmatist who is first to suggest the taboo possibility of human consumption (cannibalism is the rational choice, right?); Annabel Howlett plays the Christian peacemaker turned knife wielding assassin; Teddy Bodey’s laddish ‘banter’ teeters into gratuitous violence;  Eca  Nedelea  plays the metaphysicist who tips from apathy to an appetite for blood; and  Barnaby Frith plays the Darwinian politician who offers a coldly rational justification for murder.

It’s survival of the fittest now and the audience begin to swallow the truth that green and red team alike have an appetite for human flesh.  So, when a hapless teacher stumbles into the human jungle, well, let’s just say there’s no apple for teacher at the end of this particular school day. And as the terrible truth dawns on the audience,  the final inane (insane?) smiles of these troubled teens in the closing scene will truly be  the stuff of this particular teacher’s  future nightmares (Nope – I don’t think I’ll be signing up to volunteer for Bronze DofE this year!)

There are incredible physical theatre sequences  throughout this astonishing piece of theatre, as we watch our marooned teens scuttle about like lab rats, fight red in tooth and claw, swim through imaginary oceans, roar like caged beasts and pout like mean girls. The soundtrack lurches between cheesy cabaret and a dissonant jungle beat to convey the primitive duality of man – capable of both compassion… and, well, cannibalism. The  incredible set, designed and created by James Sellick allows tortured teens to emerge out of semi-darkness into a murky mist-filled forest, where red and green light sequences signal their gradual descent into salivating savagery.

What I love most about the Year 9 play is seeing how the young actors mature, embracing the complex and challenging themes of their chosen project, stepping out of their comfort zones, tackling controversial themes, and taking ownership of an exciting new  piece  of theatre. Thanks to the innovation and extraordinary imagination of director Jaye Williams, this young cast experienced the excitement of  experimenting with a range of styles from naturalism  to physical theatre and breaking the fourth wall, working collaboratively to create a piece of astonishing maturity and power which left the audience ….dare I say it? Hungry for more!

Yes, ‘Flesh’ is a mouth-watering theatrical treat that serves up triple helpings of talent from our incredible Year 9s! But it would never happen like that in real life … would it?

Review by Mrs Bruton, English and Drama departments

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