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More sex and violence: Playfight @sohotheatre

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The funny thing about three girls growing up under a tree is that you never quite know when they're being serious or just messing about. One time, they might be talking about giving blow jobs on a tennis court at school and another, they might be yearning for a connection that they can't quite explain. That's what happens in Playfight, an Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2024 hit currently showing at Soho Theatre .  Writer Julia Grogan doesn't give us much time to dwell on the lives of these three young teenage girls. One minute, they're fifteen and giggling, and then the next thing, they're off getting married or going to University. But underneath all the smutty talk, humour, and quick scene changes, there is a darker underbelly about relationships, power, and consent. It's about finding your way in a complex world that can dehumanise and degrade you. But as things move so quickly, you could blink and miss it. This is too bad as the performances capturing this co...

Geography: out and about...

There is a north / south divide between Londoners, which is silly really as there are crap parts of London both north and south of the Thames. Only the other day I was taunting somebody in NW London over their local unisex sauna that they described was where you could pick up an Eastern European sex slave. Welcome to the new Europe.

In SW2 where I am now located there isn't much of that. Although on the weekend a strange man (who was not local) knocked on the door and asked if A would mind "holding his things" for a little while… Apart from that it is a nice quiet street, in easy walking distance to Balham and Streatham Hill, although personally I prefer the extra walk to Balham than Streatham Hill which has to have one of the crappiest high streets in Britain.

Well this arrangement is temporary and depending on the outcome of a few things my location will change quite drastically in the next week or so…

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