EdFringe Review: SLAY

21st-century coping mechanisms can be absurd, but in SLAY, writer and performer Lois-Amber Toole pushes them straight into surreal territory. At the centre of this vibrant solo show is Kit, a twenty-something Geordie who has fled Newcastle for London, leaving behind unresolved trauma and crude hometown graffiti to work in a high-end oyster restaurant.

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Armed with a pillbox full of antidepressants, a can of predator-marking spray, and a severe case of main-character syndrome, she views her daily existence through a heavily filtered lens. What begins as a caustic portrait of Gen-Z bravado quickly evolves into a darkly comical, magical realist examination of how young women construct internal worlds just to stay intact.

Toole’s success hinges on this distortion of reality. Kit does not simply endure daily life; she reframes it as a series of absurd, hyper-stylised cinematic episodes. When a text message from an ex-boyfriend threatens her fragile stability, her response is a retreat into elaborate revenge fantasies and heightened, dreamlike logic. A trip to a “Virginity Restoration Clinic” is announced by a glossy commercial jingle, while her flatmates’ matching self-defence charms are treated with the absurd, mythical weight of superhero weapons.

The production leans heavily into this uncanny atmosphere. Director Anna Morris keeps the staging minimalist, relying on sudden shifts between ambient washes and spotlights to signal Kit’s detachment. Audio cues function as internal motifs, yanking her back and forth between gritty social realism and her own glossy illusions. Toole shifts rapidly between regional accents, stepping in and out of caricature as she parodies oblivious therapists and condescending London diners.

Revenge Fantasies and Broken Mirrors

As the performance progresses, the boundary between actual events and Kit’s coping mechanisms continually dissolves and reforms. The play’s magical realist edge becomes its sharpest tool, allowing revenge-fantasy sequences to take on a visceral, almost fable-like quality. When she impulsively brandishes predator spray at a lost pedestrian for simply asking directions, the laugh is nicely undercut by the hyper-vigilance beneath it. Such double-edged humour remains present throughout, but it grows increasingly strained as the underlying cause of her PTSD comes into focus.

The show is at its strongest when it embraces these strange, heightened juxtapositions. A scene detailing the harsh reality of low-paid service work sits side-by-side with bizarre internal monologues about personal reinvention. By treating Kit’s internal logic as real within the universe of the stage, Toole avoids turning the character into a simple case study. Instead, the audience is pulled inside her feverish attempt to rewrite her own story.

There are flaws in the dramatic architecture, however. The final quarter rushes through several key reveals, relying on tonal shifts that cut off interesting narrative threads before they fully mature. As fantasy and reality collide, the finale occasionally also struggles for clarity, leaving it somewhat ambiguous as to what precisely has transpired in the physical world. 

Yet these structural hiccups do little to undermine the show’s core impact. SLAY succeeds because it treats its protagonist’s fractured psyche with theatrical imagination rather than sentimental melodrama. By anchoring real trauma inside a surreal, darkly funny nightmare, Lois-Amber Toole delivers a piece of writing that feels distinctly original and fiercely alive. It is a striking, uncomfortably entertaining, and thoroughly engaging hour of theatre.

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