The Acid Test

Synopsis

'This has been the worst day of my life. So can you please get drunk with me?' Dana, Ruth and Jess down shots to console the heart-broken, to comfort the anxious and just pass the time. Kicked out from the family home Jess’s dad, Jim, invades the party with just as much recklessness as the girls. As the night passes and vodka bottles are emptied, Friday night in becomes high drama. An unruly new comedy asking if age equals maturity.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 24 May 2011

Anya Reiss’s award-winning Spur of the Moment recounted adolescent growing pains and a broken marriage in a fractious household; two years later, in The Acid Test, three twenty-one- year-old girls in a London flat drink the night away with the father of one of them.

Dana is having a bath when Ruth turns up in a state; she’s split with her boyfriend. Jessica’s dad, Jim, joins the party after “a bit of a spat back at HQ” – mum’s teamed up with the roofer and thrown him out. Dana’s been invited to the Savoy for sex with her boss. She’s thinking about it. Jessica’s working on her resentment towards dad and her insularity from men generally. She may even be a virgin, shock horror.

As in her first play, Reiss displays a real gift for high quality sitcom dialogue, and she can effortlessly translate how she and her middle-class, privately educated friends behave directly to the stage. Jim is a critical adult, but he also wants to join in.

While it’s not so...

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Latest User Review

Thomas Eslinger - 12 July 2011:

As a university student I have never seen a play that so vividly and accurately captured this time in the lives of us all. Every character was real to me and the situations and very difficult questions that were posed still have me thinking....

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