Lady Dealer
Bush Theatre, London

THE BUSH THEATRE, under Lynette Linton’s artistic direction, works hard to bring us the voices of minoritised people and groups.

Lady Dealer — direct from the Edinburgh Festival and a product of lockdown — entices us into the private world of one such person: Charley, a young forgotten woman of our times. 

Charley lives alone like many other young women, but, as a drug dealer who is also a woman, she is a rare beast who, when suddenly becoming aware that she has an audience, proceeds to confide in — and practise her fragile social skills on — us.  

At just over 75 minutes, it’s a tender, compassionate show that entertains while revealing a deeper, darker universal truth: the tragic, lonely private self of so many people who spend their lives pretending they are fine. 

Charley tells us she is fine repeatedly. But the truth is evident. She kids herself that she is in charge and in control of both her day and destiny, while we, on the other hand, see the emptiness and dead-end poverty of the life she lives.  

Written by Martha Watson Allpress — whose previous solo work Patricia Gets Ready (for a Date With the Man That Used to Hit Her) enjoyed a five-star reception at Edinburgh in 2021 — the play speaks direct to the under-forties with jokes, implied references and street-cool language patterns.

The writer seems to assume a shared youth culture of recreational drugs and hip hop, and of sexual relations that come and go, while encouraging the audience to laugh in recognition of these things or else risk an uncool label. The jokes rely largely on the in-joke ploy and there are no concessions to the old fuddy-duddy. 

But in the end the whole façade is exposed for what it is.

Emily Aboud directs Alexa Davies as Charley in a confident, fast-paced discourse that is almost a monologue but not quite. Punctuated occasionally by disembodied men’s voices — and once by the appearance of one actual man — Charley’s words flow freely and hit home.

Meanwhile Jasmine Araujo’s gloomy monochrome set comprised of heavy, ageing speakers, amps and cumbersome trailing cables deliberately belies Charley’s talk of fairy lights in the room, and towers and books. 

Her attempt at blasé dismissal of her love affair that has recently ended transforms into recognisable grief, and we see the folly of her forced efforts at bravado.   

Sometimes, a small-character focus of this kind — although carefully worked and fulsomely displayed — seems incomplete, as if a bigger play is waiting in the wings. And that is the case here. The play ends small when it could end big. And something of Charley doesn’t quite hold up. She tells us she went to uni — “the best one… yeah” but it’s hard to picture why she went from that to here. 

The writer is already a multi-award-winner for small-scale offerings like this. It would be good to see her now brave the world of full-scale drama on a bigger canvas. 

Well-crafted, nevertheless. And touchingly authentic.

Runs until June 15. Box office: (020) 8743-5050, bushtheatre.co.uk.