Wasted. Jack Studio Theatre.

Brockley-raised writer, poet, and performer Kae Tempest has certainly had an extraordinary decade since their debut play, Wasted, was first performed back in July 2011. Amongst many other things their achievements include two Mercury Music Prize nominations, two Ivor Novello nominations for song writing, hit albums, a best-selling novel, and several dramas including Paradise a (much underrated) reworking of Sophocles’ Philoctetes at the National Theatre.

So how does director Toby Clarke’s new production of Wasted stack up, eleven years on? As a piece of drama, the pacey mixture of rap verse and traditional dialogue remains a thoughtful exploration how life-changes occur: sometimes by choice, sometimes by serendipitous happenstance, and sometimes because we take what we are given. Less positively, this context in which this gritty story of three hard-partying, South London twenty-somethings unfolds, feels a tad dated.

Ten years on from the (apparently drug-related) death of school-friend Tony (Ruaridh Mollica), mid-twenties buddies Temi (Seraphina Beh), Danny (Ted Reilly) and girlfriend Charlotte (Isabella Verrico) gather by Tony’s favourite tree to reflect on the cards life has dealt them. The implicit question hanging over the narrative is whose lives have really been wasted over the decade since the teenager’s demise? Like Banquo’s ghost, Tony is an onstage presence, part confessor figure for the trio and part manifestation of survivor’s guilt. As an act of commemoration, the trio head for a drug-fuelled evening out at a local rave. Wasted on pills and coke, tensions rise. Revelations ensue. Each one in their own way has to face up some harsh realities. Tough decisions need to be made over the coming hours.

Despite (or perhaps because of) their manifest flaws, the three friends are rounded, credible, and likeable. Office worker Temi hates her job and is none too sure she wants to spend afternoons shopping at Ikea with girlfriend Sally. It is a tremendous performance from Beh. She rolls her eyes in sheer despair at lovable loser Danny, spitting out the word ‘mate!’ with a staccato inflection that conveys an emotion midway between incredulity and disgust. Verrico chooses sullen disappointment as the leitmotif of schoolteacher Charlotte, whose aim is to move abroad before she ends up like the cynical colleagues that she faces in the staff room. Danny himself, played by Reilly as delusional and disconnected from life, chases a never-to-be obtained career in music, filling his time with prodigious pill-popping and occasional shifts at the pub.

Convincing as the characters are, one cannot help but feel post-Brexit twenty-somethings, burdened by student debt, career demands, and outrageous rent bills have sobered up since 2011. The weekly nihilistic hedonism of these three no longer quite rings true. It is the prosperous, professional, middle class drug users in their forties that fill the coke-dealers’ pockets with cash nowadays; ironically the very aspirational figures Temi, Danny and Charlotte admire but have yet to, and may never, become.

Tempest leaves the play’s final peroration to Tony, and we begin to get a sense of what his life might have been. Otherwise, his presence onstage feels a little mechanistic, as if his main role is to allow us access to the other characters’ inner thoughts. Perhaps if these three talked to each other more and less to their dead friend life would be easier for them. The message of Wasted is essentially Carpe Diem: make the most of a life that some people do not get the chance to live. It bears remembering that for some people, living their best life means taking drugs on an odd weekend out. These are not always (or even often) the wasted lives of addicts, just bad choices and opportunities postponed for another day.

Writer: Kae Tempest

Director: Toby Clarke

This Review First Appeared in The Reviews Hub