Katy Nixon's unsettling play 'Cheapo' explores the shadowy rules adolescents live by as friends navigate manipulation, secrets and the pressures of conforming. The two-hander, currently playing at Òran Mór in Glasgow, creates a special tension through an unexpected inversion of power dynamics.
When we meet Kyla MacDougall, played by Yolanda Mitchell, she has a frightening self-assurance, teasing and provocative. Her nerdy classmate Jamie Sheldon, played by Testimony Adegbite, is cautious and scared, barely able to answer in complete sentences. But as the play unfolds, it becomes apparent that while Jamie is trapped in a tough corner, the real victim is Kyla.
Jamie has witnessed a sexual assault at a party and is committed to telling the truth. Kyla wants him to retract his police statement to take pressure off her friends Ryan, Stevo and Paulie, teenagers under the influence of online misogyny. The girl who behaves as the boys' emissary is actually the subject of their violence, though she cannot admit it. Kyla sees being ostracised as a greater threat than being abused.
Nixon draws out the contradictory emotions of teenagers trying to fit into a world where the pressure to conform is real and the urge to do the right thing is abstract, as well as a young woman trying to make sense of being raped. Gillian Argo's chequered set reflects the mental chess game they are playing, with a red ribbon scarring the stage like the slash of a knife.
The term 'cheapo' describes a trick to lure a chess opponent into making a losing move. Under the lively direction of Guardian critic Brian Logan, the play is a slippery to-and-fro of strategy, speculation and cunning, as the teenagers search for options to escape what feels like inevitable checkmate, but might just go beyond a binary black and white.
'Cheapo' runs at Òran Mór, Glasgow until 4 October, then at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from 7–10 October, and Lemon Tree, Aberdeen from 14–18 October.
