theSpace on the Mile
August 11–22
(17:35)
This year’s Fringe is host to a very intellectual play called Spare Room. At @theSpace on the Mile, Blue Duck Theatre Company have establish’d themselves, in a remarkably short space of time, as a stand-out & stand-alone company. A newly formed Cardiff-based conservatoire group, founded in 2024, their aim here is to shock their audience with true tales of drug-fuel’d degradation & the darker realities of student life.
The play is set in a student flat, & as we enter we’re immediately confronted by the aftermath of some serious revelling, bodies strewn unconscious & fast asleep around the room. It startled me a little, while creating a definite sense of foreboding about the play to come.
Blue Duck came into being as the brainchild of Georgina Housby, who plays Jodie, & Sam Dinnage, who also performs in the production. Through theatre, they wanted to confront the state of affairs facing a great many students who fall far from the life they intended, descending instead into heavy drugs, alcohol, sex & next to no education.
This hard-hitting reality is soon brought sharply into focus. Jodie makes the life-changing decision to apply for a room in this student flat, thinking it will be the beginning of a university career full of great things. She gets on well with the boys & girls around her, easily speaking her mind & finding her place among them. Yet she herself has arrived from an abusive upbringing, making this true story all the more potent as we watch another destructive environment slowly take hold.
Spare Room contains some great writing, wonderful diction & all the qualities of very well-constructed theatre from this young entourage, with strong performances from Luke Dyer, Annabel McCusher & others. Jodie’s tale becomes a sad example of someone taking on one bad experience after another. There’s a clear desire here to write for change in society, & to do so in a provocative, hard-hitting way. Crucially, Jodie doesn’t immediately become upset or frustrated by what’s happening around her—she simply goes along with it, while gradually everything gets worse.
The company consists of nine actors, with its two founders taking on numerous roles both on & off stage. Their interactions feel playful, natural & completely ordinary, which makes what follows all the more disturbing. Their mouths are filthy, their actions are fill’d to the brim with degradation, & their love of intoxication grows far beyond their need to actually survive university.
The movement of the play displays great timing & a real ability to make its points. There is near-complete nudity & destructive scenes in which Jodie barely knows what’s going on around her. She loses entire evenings from her memory. She is later reminded of sexual encounters she cannot quite place. With each incident we feel a deeper desperation, watching someone already damaged by a drunken mother & an abusive father fall so far that eventually there seems to be no landing space left beneath her.
As the catastrophe heightens, the police arrive at the door & eventually an ambulance comes for one of these poor souls. This is certainly no all’s well that ends well scenario. The play’s debut at the 2025 Camden Fringe brought the company five nominations, & it’s easy to see why the work attracted attention. Blue Duck have tackled their subject by being painfully honest, hard-hitting & unafraid of taking on a crucial theatrical cause.
There is little distraction, mercy or well-being to be found in Spare Room. Instead, it confronts us with realities seemingly being experienced by a greater & greater number of young people. It’s painful stuff to be made aware of, but that’s precisely why theatre such as this has a purpose.
Daniel Donnelly
