”Sugar Coat” at Southwark Playhouse – review

It’s hard not to like something that features a quintet of impressively multi-disciplinary female and non-binary actor-musicians belting out punk and pop in what looks like a cross between student digs and a mosh pit, while telling a story that unflinchingly explores female sexual fluidity. Joel Samuels and Lilly Pollard’s Sugar Coat is cheeky and engaging, eye-wateringly frank at times, harrowing at others, and suffused with affection.

It’s a refreshingly off-the-wall feminist fist-pump of a show, more ‘gig theatre’ than conventional play, that explores a young woman’s sexual awakening, and the myriad of choices, some pretty unexpected, facing newbies setting sail on the oceans of erotic and romantic possibility. It’s also about music, in all its grimy, caffeinated, intense joy and the way it percolates youthful, impressionable souls. Pollard’s songs, thrashy and pounding, are of a genre you don’t often hear in the theatre, and they feel all the more bracing for that. They elevate an intermittently interesting script, co-written with Samuels, that is packed with urgent contemporary topics, but lacks distinctive flavour. Although often funny and well observed, it all sounds pretty familiar, bordering on the didactic, and sometimes comes across like a potty-mouthed sex education broadcast.

Celine Lowenthal’s laidback production has the cast/band wander on before house lights dim, checking their mics for sound and eye-balling the first couple of rows, and audience members are at liberty to leave and re-enter the auditorium as they see fit. Despite the initial chummy jokiness (lead singer Dani Heron is a disarming, relatable presence), that informal approach to theatre etiquette serves a purpose beyond recreating the relaxed atmosphere of a gig, as some viewers may find themselves triggered by the graphic descriptions of a miscarriage and sexual violation.

Not that the text is exploitative, but neither does it doesn’t pull any punches. If the genre-defying presentation feels more remarkable and original than the basic material, having the unnamed heroine joining a polyamorous relationship as she confronts and moves on from sexual trauma, takes the storytelling into comparatively uncharted territory. It’s handled sensitively, although the couple she moves in with (tenderly played by Eve de Leon Allen and Anya Pearson) seem more like plot devices than real people. Despite the excellent performances, this pair are a bit too-good-to-be-true, verging on downright drippy.

Lead Heron fields a gloriously raucous and rangy voice, and has a beautiful energy. Sarah Workman is a delight as her clueless first boyfriend, and Rachel Barnes is genuinely touching as her supportive, endlessly supportive mum. Good though she is, Barnes can’t do much with the role of a sex therapist who pops up with wearying regularity.

Lucy Baker Swinburn’s sound design is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it makes a nice change to hear most of the lyrics and harmonies, but on the other it’s a bit clean and, well, quiet to capture the anarchic spirit of punk and the Riot Grrrl bands it’s imitating. That politeness is a problem for the production as a whole; it should ultimately feel more wild, dangerous and “eff you” than it does, for all of the swearing, sweating, the rock god(dess) posturing and crazily tossed around hair. Having the cast defiantly bellow “f*ck the patriarchy” at the end feels grafted-on rather than a truly organic moment derived from what we’ve watched in the preceding 90 minutes.

There’s an amusing disconnect between firing off in-ya-face rock songs then turning around and wishing your audience a safe journey home, which is what happens here. It’s kind-of sweet but it’s not rock’n’roll, just as Sugar Coat is entertaining, but it’s not great drama. Watching this cast sing and play is undeniably exhilarating though.