From the moment I stepped into the Hen & Chickens Theatre, Spare Room had me hooked. The set transported the audience straight into the grimy heart of a shared student living room, an all-too-familiar scene for many. Empty bottles littered the floor, takeaway cartons were strewn across every surface, and semi-conscious bodies lay sprawled across sofas and chairs, the aftermath of what appeared to be a wild party… or perhaps something darker.
While I’ve never lived in such a house myself, I instantly recognised it, having visited friends in similarly chaotic student digs, though maybe not quite to the extreme depicted on stage. It was a setting that felt both exaggerated and entirely believable.
The experience began even before the play formally started. A girl in a red PVC dress, clearly suffering the effects of a brutal hangover, stood at the entrance as the audience filed in. She rubbed her eyes, squinted against the light, and welcomed us with deadpan irritation, muttering that she didn’t care where anyone sat, “just sit down.” It was an excellent introduction that set the tone perfectly: irreverent, messy, and painfully real.
With a cast of nine, the play depicts the unruly, hedonistic lifestyle of a group of young adults immersed in a world of binge drinking, drugs, casual sex, and a performative version of friendship. What starts as humorous chaos soon reveals itself to be a much more serious commentary on self-destruction, trauma, and the often-unspoken consequences of excess.
The story centres around Jodie, played by the immensely talented Georgina Housby, who also wrote and produced the play. Jodie arrives at the house expecting a lively yet manageable student experience, only to discover she’s the sole girl living with four slobbish, lazy young men. Naïve, soft-spoken, and virtually teetotal, Jodie is clearly unprepared for what lies ahead. Her character’s emotional ride is deeply compelling, escaping an unstable, alcoholic home, only to land in a new version of dysfunction.
Housby’s performance is remarkable. With a subtlety reminiscent of a young Lesley Manville, she brings a layered, expressive presence to the stage. Her facial expressions alone convey a deep internal conflict as she navigates this toxic new environment. A recurring moment occurs when Jodie, suddenly sobering up from a night of excess, staggers to the front of the stage – her eyes wide with the dawning horror of what little she can remember. The transition between scenes here is handled with clever, disorienting abruptness, mirroring her emotional state and effectively drawing the audience into her confusion and fear.
The male characters are, by design, hard to like. They’re caricatures of selfishness, cruelty, and immaturity, bonded more by convenience and a shared obsession with booze, gaming, and girls than by genuine friendship. However, one character, a guileless, overweight boy who is neurodivergent, stood apart, evoking genuine empathy and providing a quiet counterpoint to the bravado and toxicity of the others.
At times, the dialogue was fast-paced and chaotic, with overlapping conversations demanding the audience’s full attention. This frenetic energy mirrored real-life interactions among young people and contributed to the immersive nature of the production, though it occasionally made it difficult to catch every word.
Spare Room is a dark comedy, unafraid to tackle heavy themes such as addiction, peer pressure, sexual consent, and trauma. While it’s laced with humour, often self-deprecating or absurd, it never shies away from the gravity of its subject matter. The play strikes a difficult balance with surprising grace: it’s both entertaining and deeply unsettling, but perhaps in need of a little polish (pun intended) here and there.
By the final scene, the audience was left not just entertained, but disturbed. The conversation among audience members may continue long after the closing scene, a testament to the power of this bold, unflinching piece of theatre.
Georgina Housby is a force to watch, onstage and off and the show succeeds in holding a mirror to the reckless, often painful undercurrent of student life.
Review by Bernadette Lintunen
Needing a fresh start, Jodie takes the plunge and applies for a room in a house share. Confronted with the unexpected world of chunder charts, STD’s and tangible testosterone, we follow Jodie as she navigates how to survive.
Through this bold, naturalistic, dark comedy, Spare Room explores important themes of gender politics, consent and addiction, bound to leave you reflecting on the world we live in. Entirely set in a kitchen/living room, expect to be thoroughly immersed into the lives of these badly behaved twenty-somethings, who’ll leave you cackling one minute and speechless the next.
Georgina Housby – Jodie
Sam Dinnage – Callum
Polly Dennett – Ella
Luke Dyer – Mary
Will Meadowcroft – Alex
Tom David Griffiths – Ben
Shreya Lallu – Lena
Annabel McCusker – Sienna
Matt Underhill – Jack
SPARE ROOM
Hen & Chickens Theatre, 31 July to 3 August 2025
Presented as part of The Camden Fringe
