Written by Katy Nixon

Directed by Brian Logan

Review by Olivia Burns

Traverse Theatre

A Play, A Pie, A  Pint vet Katy Nixon returns with horrifying relevance and an uneasy Tuesday-afternoon-watch in Cheapo, directed by Brian Logan. School uniforms, chicken-shop meet-ups, crippling anxiety and big hoop earrings thrust into a paradigm of teenagerisms and adolescence that we oh so wish we could forget about, and yet Nixon’s sensitive play serves as a brilliant reminder of why this should never happen. 

As Jamie (Testimony Adegbite) waits for his routinely-played chess game with his best friend Zeke, it is instead Kyla (Yolanda Mitchell) in all her intimidating efforts who enters the KFC joint demanding to play instead. We find out in time that Jamie is the ‘snitch’ who informed the police about the sexual violence that Kyla was victim to at a party by her boyfriend and all of his friends. What ensues, as can be expected, is a game of chess which systemically mimics the powerplay and personal politics of teen-living within a world of mass media and expectations for young women to reject any sense of youth the second they hit puberty. 

The pair of actors work dynamically and successfully together as an oscillating barometer of power, fear, conflict, sympathy, and eventually solidarity. Adegbite’s Jamie is believable and consistent, offering a lovely balance of fear and principle. Mitchell, however, stands out especially as a gorgeously sensitive, genuinely fearful Kyla who is upsettingly headstrong and wise for her age out of necessity. Admittedly, at points where Nixon’s script borders on cliche, Mitchell’s tenderness and thoughtful performance wields the words of the play back into the hyperreal and truthful; a talent considering her genuinely intimidating capacities at the beginning of the play (and in a shocking moment of violence at the very end). 

Nixon’s script achieves the battle of balancing sensitivity and polemic bite. More impressively, however, it deconstructs itself throughout the course of the hour; Kyla insists to Jamie that her abusers are her ‘mates’ and that its nothing all that bad, forcing the dynamic of the two into an uncomfortable territory where Jamie almost has to mansplain Kyla’s own assault to her. However, as the chess game plays on, and the pair realise that any court of law has, and will, systemically subjugate them into ‘willing pawns’ of sexual (or racial) abuse, Kyla finally admits ‘you think I don’t know that, you prick’. Nixon cleverly displays a cutting indictment of the criminal justice system whilst humanising her characters as real-life teenagers rather than objectified symbols of morality and righteousness.

Logan navigates Nixon’s script with sensitivity and clarity. Logistically, unfortunately, this clarity goes slightly amiss to the audience members unlucky enough to sit in the side-seated auditorium. Indeed, Adegbite’s face was blocked for the majority of the hour, which is a particular shame in a genuinely very sweet moment between Kyla and Jamie in the revelation that Kyla’s was a champion chess player. Despite this, however, Cheapo is a promising and intriguing investigation into the danger of modern youth, and a relevant reminder of why it is so important that teenagers are not only listened to, but more importantly, are protected enough to be able to remain teenagers.

---