Review: BUNNY, Tron Theatre, Glasgow

Katie is an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl who by her own admission, thinks too much. While out with her older, ("he's black..not that it matters..") boyfriend there is a confrontation and it quickly escalates as others get involved. What starts off as a spilt ice cream cone quickly becomes about race and Katie gets swept up in it.

Bunny is a solo performance which was performed with a single row of seats around the edge of the room and the performer in the middle with only a bag of Haribo and an iPhone as props. Anna Russell-Martin addresses the audience directly and maintains eye contact throughout meaning it is impossible not to be fully engaged in this piece.

Jack Thorne's script is very wordy, clever and full of humour. Regardless of how good the script is, this play wouldn't be half as impressive without the kind of performance we saw tonight. I was stunned to find in the programme that this was Anna Russell-Martin's professional debut as she was exceptional as Katie. As well as reeling off a solid seventy-five-minute monologue she brought charm and vulnerability to the piece.

As much as Katie seems self-assured and that "she knows what she is doing" there are so many moments where we see that she is out of her depth and a lot younger than the people she associates with. Katie brags about her conquests and begins the show by talking about how much oral sex she's given boys- yet adds defensively that she never actually had sex with them. As much as she might want to seem as though she's worldly and edgy, we get a bit of insight into her background that her parents read The Guardian and she plays clarinet in the school orchestra and that she has had a good upbringing.

I could have happily watched this play much longer than the 1hr15min runtime. The plot is fresh and unpredictable and is gripping throughout.

Bunny runs at the Tron Theatre until Saturday 7th April.

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