Disposable. Union Theatre.

Becky Bond’s Disposable is a mixed bag. After a grimly awful 40-minute first half, you may well head for the bar, craving a stiff drink and an escape from five of the most smug, self-righteous, insufferable characters you will see on stage this year. But Bond has been playing us. Return after the break — it is a temptation not to —and it feels like a different play altogether.

What begins as a tedious trawl through the minutiae of Gen Z studenthood, populated by walking, talking, eye-rollingly annoying archetypes, evolves into a nuanced and fascinating study of consent, friendship, and side-taking in the messy aftermath of an alleged rape. The play is flawed, overlong, and occasionally baggy—but in the second half, there are times it grips so hard you will not be able to look away. Add in a tremendous performance from Bond, who writes herself the best lines (and why shouldn’t she), and you will be wondering what on earth she was thinking with that dire first act.

In their first semester of their second year at university, five friends share a home. It is a five-bedroom affair with a flash kitchen and a SMEG fridge packed with Prosecco and vodka. A commodious leather Chesterfield sits centre stage. One wonders how they will ever pay off the student loans. Like many Netflix dramas, it shows UK people living in a style they could not possibly afford in real life. It is just as well this lot shares, because you cannot imagine anyone else putting up with them. They are friends in that suffocating, we-love-each-other-to-death way that has become standard in Gen Z drama.

Bond plays Megan, a TikTok queen with 150,000 followers on her ‘One Day In The Life’ channel. She has a habit of getting so drunk that she blacks out, which may explain why her boyfriends have a habit of ghosting her. She posts radically enhanced, titillating pics on her Hinge profile (some foreshadowing here). “It’s a bit ‘profile’ you, but it’s not you,” someone tells her. Then there is Will (William Huke), a nerdy man-baby with a Lord Of The Rings fetish and a crushing inability to find anyone to have sex with him. On the positive side, he comes up with some nifty Love Island references.

Add struggling non-binary English student Sam (a tremendous Sukey Willis) to the mix. They cannot finish that essay to save their life. “Fuck you, Sylvia Plath”, they say by way of motivational self-talk. Sam has just had their first threesome, and there may or may not be a ‘thing’ going on with Will.  Then comes the sensible one, Lucy (Amaarah Roze), who often goes to bed early and has a longstanding boyfriend called Ben. The final member of the quintet is Jacob (Paddy Lintin), a boorish, narcissistic rugger-bugger who sleeps with anything that walks. “You’re a real MILF, Lucy, you know that,” is his version of small talk.

Let’s skip over the first half: think drinking games, Scooby Do outfits, karaoke, and crushingly dull student small talk that makes Friends look like Dostoyevsky.

At the outset of the second half, one of the men has been accused of rape by a fellow student, an offence supposedly committed at the quintet’s home. The group initially draw together, but then news of a second incident emerges much closer to home, fracturing friendships and causing sides to be taken (Bond telegraphs who and what in the first half, but it is still a shocker when it comes). What follows is a layered, thoughtful reflection on the dividing line between a stupid decision and a crime, and on the groups’ contrasting responses to the allegations. The victim, if that is what she is, wants to stay friends with the supposed perpetrator. But how can she? At what point does someone have so many faults that he is no longer a good guy? She is pushed and pulled by her friends, and one feels for her.

Bond initially lets us make up our own minds about whether an offence has occurred. But then inserts a scene in which she tells us, in no uncertain terms, what she thinks happened. Perhaps she cannot bear to let a potential rapist off the hook, but narratively, it is a flaw that defuses much of the second-half tension she has cleverly built up. Still, she makes some intriguing points about how the victim’s voice can get lost amid the cacophony surrounding this type of allegation. Some refuse to believe her, and some seek to fit her experiences into a cookie-cutter version of rape that is as much about virtue-signalling as it is about the complexities of one woman’s uncertain experiences.

The interval comes 40 minutes in, in case your pre-theatre cocktails overrun. Don’t miss the second half, though, you will regret it.

Writer:  Becky Bond

Director:  Elodie Foray