The Wasp - Review!

I attended a performance of “The Wasp” at the Southwark Playhouse Borough last night, and was honestly left confused. The story follows Heather (Cassandra Hercules) who is a wealthy woman who gives Carla (Serin Ibrahim), her childhood friend , a very interesting proposition.

This storyline has so much potential, and if accompanied by the right script I think it could have been significantly better. It was not engaging at all. Despite the plot twists being very interesting, after they were revealed I lost all interest again. Act one was only 30 minutes long, but felt so much longer. There were loads of times when the audience would laugh heavily at some lines, I’m not sure if I didn’t understand the jokes but I don’t feel that they warranted such a significant amount of laughter.

There was this technique used where they would say a few lines and then some music would play, and the two characters would swap positions and say the exact same lines again, often 3 or four times we had to rewatch the same scenes. I felt as if I was going insane and rewind had been pressed on a tv. I think this could be impactful in certain contexts, but I had absolutely no idea what its intention was and if it did have one, I don’t feel that this was executed clearly. I thought it was fine for the times when only two lines were repeated, but when they rewinded a whole entire scene and we had to watch it all over again I was baffled as it had no impact. Additionally, the location transition was too long. I completely understand that because its a two-person show that there is a limit to the time that it can all be moved in, but it completely disconnected me from the story having to wait two minutes for them to move a few chairs forward.

Serin Ibrahim who played Carla genuinely carried the show. Her acting was the only thing that kept me somewhat engaged. However, I do feel that the entire show felt scripted (of course I know it is scripted but I mean that the acting didn’t feel natural). It felt like they were waiting for each others lines and there was minimal variation in emphasis and tone in the way they spoke. It felt slightly stereotypically gcse drama like.

The monologues of each character were impactful and covered very important and very heavy topics. Cassandra Hercules’ monologue about the Year 9 disco was the peak of her acting for the entire performance and this was the only part in which I truly felt inclined to listen attentively.

I wish I could have spoken more positively about any aspect of this show as the storyline sounds amazing, I feel it was not executed well and honestly didn’t particularly enjoy the show.

Rating: ⭐

{Gifted invite}