I often look at awk­ward, self-con­scious teens and want to tell them that life is going to be OK. Those years of exper­i­en­cing things for the first time can strike you down with a pleth­ora of feel­ings from ecstasy to misery.

‘The First Time’ explores all of those feel­ings as five tal­en­ted women take to the stage in a ‘counsellor’s couch’ style per­form­ance to tell their stor­ies.

As the spot­light beams down on the act­resses one by one, their stor­ies and char­ac­ters devel­op. I was pleas­antly sur­prised they avoided clichés that I expec­ted from a show about teens exper­i­en­cing their first times – no peri­ods or pen­ises were men­tioned.

Instead, ‘The First Time’ tells us of exper­i­ences that aren’t often dis­cussed such as explor­ing one’s sexu­al­ity, being phys­ic­ally abused, race and class, and the unfa­mili­ar­ity of first love. These stor­ies are scattered among some more famil­i­ar ones about peer pres­sure and the stresses of work, study, friend­ships and daily life.

The char­ac­ters are com­plic­ated, flawed and love­able; mak­ing ‘The First Time’ an enter­tain­ing and insight­ful pro­duc­tion dir­ec­ted by Nee­nah Dek­kers-Reihana and per­formed by prom­ising new tal­ent.

I can’t not men­tion the inclu­sion of Lorde’s ‘Liab­il­ity’ on entry, and ‘Green Light’ on exit. So fit­ting as the stor­ies take us through tur­moil to tri­umph. Nice one.

On now at BATS Theatre – 16th – 25th March
Get your tick­ets ASAP

Dir­ect­or: Nee­nah Dek­kers-Reihana
Writer: Court­ney Rose Brown – won ‘Highly Com­men­ded’ from Playmarket’s Play­wrights b425 Com­pet­i­tion in 2016 for the script.
Cast: Iris Hende­r­son, Trae Te Wiki, Cas­sandra Suth­er­land, Ingrid Saker and Court­ney Rose Brown.