ajhlovestheatre

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT 

by Danielle Phillips 

directed by Kimberley Sykes

Southwark Playhouse Borough – The Little, London – until 4 April 2026

running time: 90 minutes no interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/children-of-the-night/

Danielle Phillips’ raucous debut play burns with the fire of blazing, unfettered talent. Children Of The Night is crude, raw, big of heart and loud of mouth. It owes a debt to Jim Cartwright both for its salty, gobby poeticism as well as its episodic structure, but it has a ferocious energy that feels all its own. 

 If you’re looking for finesse and subtlety, this isn’t your show. Kimberley Sykes’ staging has an ‘in ya face’ sensibility that’s appropriate to the writing but threatens to verge on the tiring and repetitive, despite the commitment of the performances.  Phillips stars in her own work, playing amateur DJ and former clubbing wild child Lindsay looking back on a decade of debauchery as the clock ticks down to the dawning of the year 2000, and she’s as full throttle and fearless an actor as she is a writer. She’s joined by Charlotte Brown and Gareth Radcliffe, both delivering lovely, vivid work as, respectively, Lindsay’s academically gifted best friend Jen, and Terry, her Dad, himself a former clubber.

 Children Of The Night gets off to a refreshing, energised start as it recalls the hedonistic nightlife of 1990s Doncaster (here affectionately referred to as Yorkshire’s answer to Vegas). Snatches of clubbing bangers pulse through the theatre (boisterous sound design and music by Ben McQuigg) and Jennifer Kay’s movement direction evokes the sweaty euphoria of a heaving dancefloor. Phillips’ youthful, wildly enthusiastic Lindsay eulogises her hometown and it seems that we are going to be in for an unusually uplifting portrait of working class life where everyone is, despite financial and health woes, basically having an ongoing party.

 Hold that thought though. The alco-pop fuelled optimism of the first section, punctured only by some unease between Terry and teenage Lindsay over her absent mother, is a bit of a red herring. It turns out that Phillips is on about something much bleaker and darker. Under the gaudy façade of twirling glitterballs, roving multi-coloured spotlights (suitably unrestrained lighting design by Jessie Addinall), flailing limbs and thundering beats, Lindsay’s partying is spiralling out of control; with the excessive drinking and rampant promiscuity, her social life is starting to resemble a death wish more than a good time, driving a schism between her and her father and best mate. On top of that, Jen (who is of Chinese parentage) is on the receiving end of racist abuse, and there is a disturbing outbreak of HIV infections amongst heterosexual revellers. The play slaloms from joyful chaos to the harrowingly grim with almost indecent haste.

 Sharp tonal changes can be hugely effective; that is only intermittently the case here, but there is no doubt that Phillips is a bold, gifted writer and performer. The transition between, and crossover of, heightened, poetic language and the potty-mouthed slang of ‘real’ speech is very nicely done. Brown has some beautiful moments as a young woman more sensitive than she initially appears, and clearly on the brink of outgrowing her limited horizons. Radcliffe and Phillips establish the sometimes fractious bond between father and daughter with a winning warmth and accuracy. Hannah Sibai’s abstract set, a bathroom where the walls periodically become translucent to reveal glowing, colour-changing worms of neon, is a little cumbersome but economically suggests the rapidly changing locales.

 Shapeless but dynamic, and with a disappointingly inconclusive ending, Children Of The Night is part celebration, part examination of the intensity and durability of female friendships, and part lament for a time now lost. The lack of sentimentality is commendable, as is the unflinching willingness not to over-sell the characters to us: these are real, flawed humans. If ultimately it’s not clear what the point of the play as a whole is, the sheer talent on display provides an invigorating jolt.