A small space that’s a crucible of big talent

Superhoe Royal Court Upstairs ★★★★

Fifty years ago this month, the Theatre Upstairs – the Royal Court’s second auditorium – opened. Tightly confined yet creatively liberating, this attic space has served as a crucible of talent, propelling new names to the fore and allowing old hands to experiment. Is an 85-minute monologue a low-key way of marking its half-century? Yes. Yet Nicôle Lecky’s Superhoe does the job brilliantly.

Why? Because it stands squarely in the tradition of Royal Court writing while being its own fresh thing: it expresses what it’s like to be young right now, the perennial promise, the particular pitfalls. Mingling mirth with pathos, it wraps together the complexities of being at the starting gate of adulthood yet feeling like the race is almost over – how there’s not enough opportunity, time, money; and if you’re unlucky, as our 24-year-old heroine is, how easy it is to get lost.

Initially, it looks as though the mixed-race east Londoner who’s relaying her chaotic life – conjuring in passing those who come into it too – has made a lot of her own misfortune. Sasha Clayton (played by Lecky, below) has dropped out of university and – spurning low-paid jobs – retreated to her bedroom. There she fancies she’s forging a pop career while battling with her reproving mother, stepfather and half-sister. “Even though it’s not finished yet, I might send out a few tracks off my EP to a couple of music people,” she confides (we’re an imagined audience of well-wishers), having warbled a song about selfies. It’s the first of a number of enjoyable tracks, written with hip-hop producer and DJ the Last Skeptik, which collide street roughness with soulful polish.

Lent a mercurial mix of entitled assertiveness and spirited insecurity by Lecky, there’s something endearing and laughable about this posturing figure in joggers and hoodie-top – even a hint of Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard in her defensiveness about her estranged boyfriend’s mysteriously torched garden.

The harsh reality-check – and beginning of deeper empathy with her – comes when she’s given her marching orders by her fed-up folks, and, finding there’s no council support for housing, starts living on the mercy of acquaintances.

Initially there’s Saleem – who demands sexual favours and ominously keeps a samurai sword in his living room. Then there’s can-do northerner Carly who lures her into a world of “premium cam-work” – “You’re like a virtual girlfriend that men can chat to and strip off for.”

As this online sub-culture becomes ever more lucrative, shady and degrading, so Sasha’s brave face gets ever harder to maintain; she’s propelled into sleazy escorting and even an orgy in Dubai.

The cashpoint in one corner of Chloe Lamford’s domestic, carpeted set makes the point that there’s a price to be paid for easy money. That’s a touch unsubtle, but the virtue of the script is that it doesn’t hammer home its points. Millennials are – so we’ve read elsewhere – struggling with living costs and a sense of self-worth while maintaining a digital veneer of total fulfilment. The beauty of the super-smart Superhoe is that it makes you feel all this generational angst on the pulse.

Until Feb 16. Tickets: 020 7565 5000; royalcourttheatre.com