Theatre / Reviews
Review: Spoil Me, The Rondo, Bath – ‘A bold show delivered with joy and honesty’’
Hattie is a sugar baby. She loves to be rewarded for her ‘company’ with money and expensive gifts, and there are plenty of people who want to pay for her services.
We’ve all wondered whether we could do what Hattie does – would we have do it in secret, what would our friends and family think if they found out – so it’s good to see a play which explores what that life actually means for her, and the people who love her for free.
Based on a real life experience, Spoil Me tells Hattie’s story in a series of overlapping time shifts, with whip-split changes of scene covering various stages of her life between the ages of 14 and 24. We see her studying for her GCSEs, dreaming of her future, arguing with her mother and dancing with her best friend, Dan.
is needed now More than ever
And we see her with her clients – providing fantasy role play, sweetly innocent dates, emotionless sex and transactional kinks. She does all of this with a free-spirited honesty which I am convinced everyone in the audience tonight envied, to a degree. Hattie isn’t an exploited victim of abusive power and poverty – she’s totally in charge of what she’s doing.
But when reality starts to bite for Hattie as she gets older, she is forced to make a decision – it’s a virtue of the script that we don’t fully know whether she makes the right one.
Writer Pippa Thornton gives us a genuine dilemma. We want her to be happy but we’re not sure what we’d do in her shoes. And we’re so invested in her long term friendships that the final scenes have us all beaming.
Greedy Pig Theatre Company is pretty new to the South West theatre scene, having emerged from the theatre programme at Bath Spa University. Spoil Me shows them to have a combination of confidence and guts which many young companies lack, and a commitment to the job they’re doing that many established companies could learn from.
The script could do with losing about 20 minutes, and there is some unconvincing dialogue between generations, but the relationship between Hattie and her friends is so genuinely and naturally performed I forgave the clunkiness of other scenes. In a small cast it feels wrong to single out performances, but since I read that this is Marley Joyner’s first professional role I have to say I’d love to see more of her.
Spoil Me is a bold show delivered with joy and honesty – a great soundtrack and pin sharp timing.
Poster: Greedy Pig Theatre Company
Spoil Me (16+) is at The Rondo, Bath on July 19-22 at 8pm. Tickets are available at www.rondotheatre.co.uk. Follow news and events from Greedy Pig Theatre at www.greedypigtheatrecompany.com.
Main photo: Douglas Murdoch
Read more: Review: Tony! (The Tony Blair Rock Opera), Theatre Royal Bath – ‘A show where everybody shines’
Listen to the latest Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast:
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
