Review: Firebird (Southwark Playhouse Borough)

Review by Justin Williams 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Some plays become historical documents with age and others become warnings. Ten years after it first premiered, Phil Davies’ Firebird falls firmly into the latter category. As Davies himself reflects in the programme notes, “Firebird still feels like a warning.” Sitting in the audience at Southwark Playhouse tonight , it’s hard to disagree.

Inspired by the grooming scandals that dominated headlines a decade ago, Firebird follows teenager Tia as she becomes caught in a cycle of exploitation, manipulation, and institutional failure. Rather than presenting events chronologically, the story unfolds through fragmented memories, interviews, and moments of painful reflection, allowing us to experience the events through Tia’s perspective, rather than observing them from a safe comfortable distance. 

At the centre of the piece is a remarkable performance from Mollie Milne as Tia. Milne carries almost every moment of the production and does so with astonishing control. There’s nothing performative about her portrayal of trauma; no grandstanding, no emotional shortcuts. Instead, she gives us a girl who can be angry, vulnerable, defensive, and frightened, all within the same breath. It is a deeply human performance, and one that holds the audience completely. She is matched by equally impressive work from her fellow cast members.Taqi Nazeer switches seamlessly between AJ and Bilal, while Kelise Gordon-Harrison moves effortlessly between Katie, Deborah, and the various professionals who drift in and out of Tia’s life. What impresses most is the precision of the performances.

Taqi Nazeer thoroughly fooled me. I believed him initially and trusted AJ. The actor’s development into the manipulation was subtle, almost hairline fracture-like. I was quite scared by the incredible performance.  With all cast, specially Milne, every movement feels considered, every gesture purposeful. During the interrogation scenes, even the movement of a wheelchair contributes to the atmosphere, each repositioning adding to the growing sense of pressure in the room. 

Director Marlie Haco embraces the fractured structure of Davies’ writing and trusts the audience to keep up. The production moves through time with an unsettling, almost glitch-like rhythm as scenes bleed into one another through abrupt changes in light, sound, and space. It’s disorienting in exactly the right way. You never feel lost, but you do feel unsettled. The design work throughout is exceptional. Ben Jacobs’ lighting design doesn’t simply illuminate the action; it helps tell the story. Harsh uplighting, practical light sources, and actor-operated batons create moments that feel raw and deliberately unflattering. 

There is nowhere to hide in this world, and the lighting refuses to soften it for the characters or for us. What is most striking is the way the boundaries between design departments seem to disappear entirely. Tomás Palmer’s set design and Jacobs’ lighting exist in constant conversation. Hidden trapdoors open unexpectedly beneath the actors’ feet, while sections of the set rise, lower, and disappear entirely. A pulley-operated ceiling transforms the space from open and expansive to crushingly claustrophobic in a matter of seconds. 

The height of the playing space allows for some beautifully realised moments of duality. The same structure becomes open countryside for characters to wade through, sterile interview rooms where pressure quietly builds, and elevated platforms where manipulation and gaslighting are played out in full view of the audience. Every lowering of the ceiling feels significant. Every narrowing of the space feels like another door closing around Tia. The set doesn’t just create locations. It creates emotional states. The sound design and composition from Ákos Lustyik is equally accomplished. In a production so dependent on atmosphere, it would have been easy for clarity to suffer beneath layers of music and soundscape. Instead, every word lands perfectly, balanced beautifully against music and environmental sound. The programme notes make the point that grooming often begins not with fear, but with kindness, attention, and the feeling of finally being chosen. Lustyik’s work understands this completely, with warmth gradually giving way to discomfort and unease as Tia’s world slowly contracts around her. 

Costume design also deserves recognition for the clarity it brings to an intentionally fragmented production. Contemporary costumes clearly distinguish teenagers from police officers, social workers and authority figures without ever drawing undue attention to themselves. If there’s any criticism to be made, it is perhaps only that the production’s ambition occasionally feels larger than the space it currently sits in. There is a strong argument that this production deserves the larger of Southwark Playhouse’s two spaces; less a criticism, though, than a compliment.  What lingers most after the final scene is not the excellence of any one department, but the remarkable cohesion of the production as a whole. Everything feels connected where, for example, lighting informs scenery and sound shapes space, performance drives design; the production speaks with a single voice and it really works. 

That level of collaboration is surprisingly rare, and it’s a credit to the entire creative team. Other productions could learn a great deal from the confidence and discipline on display here. A brief technical interruption during the performance provided an unexpected reminder of just how invested the audience had become. What could easily have punctured the atmosphere instead prompted warm applause as the company returned to continue the performance and by that point, they’d earned it. 

Firebird is not an easy evening in the theatre, and it was never intended to be. It is uncomfortable, distressing, and emotionally draining. It is also one of the most accomplished pieces of theatre-making currently playing in London.  More than anything else, it is a production that demands to be experienced and I would imagine it earns itself quite a reputation. 

Firebird plays at Southwark Playhouse Borough until August 1st. Tickets from https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/firebird/ 

Photos by Toby Mather