Review: The Virgins (Soho Theatre)

Review by Lily Melhuish

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you’ve ever looked at an old photo of your teenage self and physically recoiled, The Virgins is sure to feel like a trip down memory lane in the best way possible. Miriam Battye’s new play, directed with bold clarity by Jaz Woodcock‑Stewart, bottles the feverish energy of a Friday night on the brink of adulthood. The drinks were strong, the eyeliner was questionable, and everyone pretended to know far more about life than they actually did.

Rosie Elnile’s set is fabulously detailed, with a hyper-realistic bathroom sitting on stage right, cluttered and alive with the residue of teenage preparation; a site of feminine performance and self-scrutiny. It’s the perfect habitat for Chloe (Anushka Chakravarti) and Jess (Ella Bruccoleri), whose wide‑eyed, breathless anticipation pulsates out of the space. They’re going out-out, they’re going to pull some boys, and then they’re going to come home and eat chicken dippers. Pure. Bliss. Opposite them is a sparse living room where two boys are welded to a video game, showing few signs of life beyond the occasional button‑mashing grunt. Between the rooms lies a narrow black corridor: a humble divide of the sexes and a symbolic no‑man’s‑land.

There is only one threat to this makeshift battlefield: dying a virgin. Luckily, Chloe has invited Anya (Zoë Armer), a non-virgin girl from the year above to help gain the advantage and conquer all things sexual. The girls’ dynamic is instantly recognisable - affectionate, annoying, loving, and competitive all at once - and the addition of Anya, the supposedly more worldly girl, disrupts the chemistry in all the predictable but still deliciously awkward ways. Anya becomes the self‑appointed, ever‑so‑patronising guru of experience, wonderfully contrasted by Phoebe (Molly Hewitt-Richards), who hangs on her every word (even making notes on her phone). The circumstances are only exacerbated by the presence of Chloe’s brother Joel (Ragevan Vasan) and Mel (Alec Boaden). Two boys literally next door? Who needs to go to out-out, there’s food at home.

Tonally, The Virgins balances on a tightrope: the humour is bold, risky, occasionally eyebrow‑raising, but undeniably authentic to its teenage protagonists. These are the kind of jokes that only friends dare tell each other, they’re messy and misguided, often toeing lines they don’t yet know exist. It’s uncomfortable at times, but deliberately so. Battye understands that adolescence is the moment when we begin to test boundaries, challenge our language, and confront the difference between edgy humour and harmful thought. Instead of sanitising that process, she puts it under a microscope and lets us watch the learning happen in real time.

Woodcock‑Stewart’s direction gives the cast plenty of time to breathe, granting space for silence that lets awkwardness ferment into something hilariously true. It’s a rare joy to watch a production that isn’t afraid to hold the audience in stillness, trusting us to sit inside the cringe and chew on it for a moment. Not just for drama, but for comedy too. It’s satisfying to see that relationship between director and performer so clearly on the stage; that level of trust to go bigger, go further, and ultimately produce the best results.

The cast is uniformly strong, each character played with that special brand of adolescent arrogance, but Hewitt‑Richards’ Phoebe proves to be the show’s secret weapon. Every facial contortion, every flustered ramble, every foot‑in‑mouth confession lands. The audience radiates protective energy toward her, bracing every time she teeters towards self-doubt. A scene involving Anya coaching her through approaching a boy in a club is so brilliantly executed I could have watched it on loop.

But beneath the pop music, lip gloss, and nervous bravado lies something darker. Alongside the girls’ high-speed sex-ed, the boys are having their own DMC. After exuberantly celebrating a victory in their video game, Joel immediately apologises for the impulsive reaction. “Why are you shrinking?” Mel asks him, and alarm bells start ringing. It’s a well-concealed ripple in the rhythm, a staccato note that you might miss if you don’t recognise the warning signs. This show is a dark horse that is so much more than meets the eye, and here is a breadcrumb pointing to something far more toxic.

For all its sharpness, The Virgins sometimes loses momentum in its eagerness to squeeze another subplot into its tight 85‑minute runtime. An underbaked flirtation, a past sexual trauma, and an absent parent never quite earn their place in the narrative. The show remains compelling, but the lack of focus occasionally blurs the emotional through‑line.

Still, The Virgins is a funny yet quietly devastating snapshot of teenagerhood: the performance, the panic, the peer review. It invites you to laugh, then asks you to look again. The ending refuses to tidy anything away, and that open‑endedness feels generous rather than evasive. These characters are mid‑transformation; sealing their arcs would be dishonest. 

The burning question: do they lose their virginity? The metaphorical dead weight of inexperience that they’re dragging around? I won’t spoil it, but it’s sure to be a night we all remember.

The Virgins plays at Soho Theatre until 7th March. Tickets from ttps://sohotheatre.com/events/the-virgins/

Photos by Camilla Greenwell