REVIEW: FLUSH By April Hope Miller at Arcola until 6 June

“A must-see. FLUSH fits an entire carousel of the female experience into a single women’s room in a Dalston nightclub” ★★★★

April Hope Miller’s ensemble-comedy FLUSH is a must-see. Of course, FLUSH’s unique humor, point-of-view, and narrative structure are no surprise coming from the winner of the 2025 Fringe Theatre Award. 

It’s clear the audience is in safe hands from the moment of entrance. Before audience members are seated, they are first ‘stamped,’ consistent with passing through the door of a nightclub. The set is immediately visceral and transportive; the tags and graffiti plastered across the three toilet stalls are comically accurate.

Under careful direction by Merle Wheldon, FLUSH fits an entire carousel of the female experience into a single women’s room in a Dalston nightclub over the course of a single night. The play’s talented ensemble rotates through characters and stories – actresses are tasked with portraying at least three characters each – through a series of fragmented toilet visits. These characters are recognizable fixtures of any ladies room on a night-out: drunk bridesmaids, teens with fake IDs, strangers hiding out from bad Hinge dates, and - worst of all - ghosts from the past we must avoid on the dance floor. Although the audience is privy to just a series of brief moments from the recurring characters’ evenings, Miller and her company deliver a complete narrative full of comedy, pathos, drama, and authenticity. 

Female audience members have a unique ability to relate to the events on stage. We are likely filling in gaps in the characters’ evenings without realising. Women will recognize the unique intimacy of this specific shared space; Miller’s decision to tell her particular story in this particular place is an incredible marriage of setting and content. The ladies room is full of secrets, drugs, romance, community, and connection, both universal and unique to womanhood. Impossible beauty standards, struggles with body image, the proliferation of plastic surgery, and the politicization of Black womens’ hair all show themselves in the bathroom mirror. In this singular setting, women will recognize moments showcasing the prolific cruelty of teenage girls, the nuances of female friendship, and the shared responsibility we feel to protect each other under an invisible umbrella of sisterhood. A shared responsibility that compels us to call Ubers for strangers. While highlighting shared experience, FLUSH is also careful not to flatten femininity or sanitize the role of race and sexuality in the female experience. Women’s rooms are, at their best, unique bastions of safety in environments and in a world with the constant threat of violence, just outside. And yet, the women’s room cannot escape this violence thanks to TERF weaponisation of the space.

FLUSH is for anyone who has or has not been inside a women’s room. Non-female-identifying audience members are invited to share in a secret world for just over an hour. Perhaps it’s the first time they’ve seen the ASK FOR ANGELA poster, which female-identifying audience members know all too well from toilet stalls and mirrors across London. FLUSH, of course, represents the axiomatic futility of attempts at institutional protection against sexual violence. As any performance centering the female experience at night must, FLUSH reckons with the dark reality that begets the posters. 

These moments are, unfortunately, the weakest in the script and Jazz Jenkins is left to carry what feels like nearly all of the show’s heaviness and darkness alone. Jenkins is the only actress who represents a single character and story throughout the night. Jenkins’s Billie is a recent Michigan transplant on a corporate night out, attempting to befriend new coworkers in a new city. The brief encounters we witness between her and her teammates only underscore that she is alone. Through no fault of Jenkins, Billie’s moments drag and the content of her story arc is the most on-the-nose. Her arc flirts with heavy-handedness and predictability, flaws the rest of the show so masterfully avoids. 

Miller’s ear for dialogue is clear in both her script and her performance. Miller herself stars alongside Jenkins and fellow co-stars Ayesha Griffiths, Miya Ocego and Joanna Strafford. Each actress is as talented as the next and all transition impressively between roles, reconstructing new and three-dimensional characterizations within minutes. 

All of this to say, London audiences should be sure to catch this 75-min comedy-drama at the Arcola Theatre through 6 June. You are guaranteed to laugh, relate, and possibly cry at just how true it all is.

FLUSH

6 May - 6 June

Arcola Theatre

75-mins, no interval

16+

Information & tickets available at - https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/flush/