The Arcola Theatre will host the debut run of Lisa Carroll’s The Misandrist.
Prickly freelancer Rachel is at the beginning of an existential crisis. It’s 2018, Brexit looms large yet never “gets done”. Rachel prays for a second referendum that will never come. The economy continues its slow decline, jobs are being squeezed. Nothing feels safe or secure. Nothing feels like it’s progressing. Maybe this existential limbo is Rachel’s punishment for stealing Tupperware at the office Christmas party. But that wasn’t her fault. It was the really good kind.
Then Rachel meets engaging go-getter Sule. Two second-generation immigrants, who meet at a sticky-floored bar in Piccadilly and share an Uber home. Sule intrigues Rachel, and she hasn’t had sex in two years, so when one thing leads to another, she sleeps with him. A few late nights and a few “what u doin?’’ messages later, they’ve fallen into a causal relationship. Over the next few months, around the contract extension and Brexit negotiations, they realise they’ve begun to offer each other something that neither can find elsewhere; in the middle of a lot of meaninglessness, they’ve found a genuine connection.
Adrift, isolated, and insecure, they scramble for new ways to connect. Somewhere along the line, they decide to explore flipping the narrative. Metaphorically, and very, very literally. Can some playful, passionate pegging provide a pathway through the pitfalls of modern relationships and present the possibility of a deeper bond?
Rachel starts to really like Sule. Sule starts to really like Rachel. And Rachel doesn’t know how to be liked. So self-sabotage seems like the best plan. Memories get twisted, who did what to whom, who f*cked who, literally and metaphorically, gets muddled. And somehow Brexit is still happening. There are two very different sides to this story, yet somehow, you’re rooting for everyone to come out OK. But of course, nobody ever wins.
The Misandrist was longlisted for the Womens’ Playwriting Prize and reached the final 40 scripts in the Verity Bargate Award . It also reached the final 40 for the BBC Writers Academy and final 30 scripts of the BBC Comedy Room among nearly 3,500 applications. This is its debut run.
The play will run at the Arcola Theatre from May 10–June 10, 2023.