Review: 30 AND OUT, Pleasance, London

When we think of coming-of-age stories, we imagine teenagers confronting life, sexuality, that sort of thing. Kit Sinclair spins the genre on its head and delivers a heart-wrenching comedy about finding yourself at 30 years old.

Written and performed by Sinclair, the piece is an autobiographical look at welcoming change at an age when women are told they need to settle down. Kit leaves her long-term boyfriend and comes out. As she grapples with deciphering her identity, director Charlotte Ive takes her audience on a rollercoaster of emotions that goes from Kirsty to Kit.

It’s an eclectic, tragically funny show. Interviews with lesbians intertwine with Kit’s own experience, gliding through verbatim and poetry to paint a picture of sapphic innocence and quiet subversion. Charismatic and quick-witted, she explores the concepts that make up queerness, betraying a certain sadness. From the negative aura that surrounds the words we use to identify homosexual women to Kit’s burning desire to fit in and find her place in the queer world at a point when “people don’t bother coming out”. The play is vibrant with poignancy.

30 and Out might be only a drop into the dearth of women-loving-women stories in theatre, but Sinclair fills that void effortlessly, calling out the hypocritical double-standards that surround the community too. She’s hands-on and raunchily tongue-in-cheek as she denounces the lack of venues for gay women (“It’s SheBar or nothing”), the fetishisation of lesbian sex by heterosexual cisgender men, and the hyper-sexual atmosphere of most queer spaces..

She offers an impressive critical analysis of how to accept one’s orientation later on in life, refusing to shy away from the hardships and grief that come with it. As she ties up the project on a high, giving it a hopeful, happy ending, she pays tribute to the lives we continue to lose to abuse, homophobic violence, and politics. She (perhaps unwittingly) gives a blueprint for those “baby gays” who aren’t babies anymore in a well-crafted production suspended between validation and cheeky comedy.

30 and Out runs at the Pleasance, London until 3 June.

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