Gen Z might be the most self-aware and sexually fluent generation yet, but they’re still fumbling through the same fog of identity that’s haunted every teenager since time began. Crotchless captures that confusion with all the clamour of five-minute TikToks, self-help podcasts, and a perpetual scroll of people telling you who to be and what to believe.

If you’re hitting your 30’s up soon or haven’t got a teenager around to translate, get ready to lean in and occasionally Google your way through Gen Z double-speak. These kids are razor-sharp and perpetually online, and marinated in irony, trauma, and trend cycles. But beneath the performative bravado are still the same questions. Who am I? Who do I want to be seen with? And, perhaps most importantly, who’s taking me to the formal?

Crotchless could not have a more perfect title for this unfiltered generation or this play. It follows Shona, on the cusp of womanhood, sharp, witty, and attuned to the world, yet still navigating the blind spots that come with growing up. She juggles social pressures and crush insecurities while her twin brother slips deeper into the online rabbit hole of the manosphere. Their mother scrambles to pull the family back from the brink as misogynistic ideology seeps into their living room.

Writer and creator Eloise Aiken approaches the subject with both courage and wit, crafting a script that dares to look the modern monster in the eye while allowing us to laugh at it. Director Madeleine Withington matches that energy, leaning into comedy as her sharpest weapon to reveal the alarming reality of online radicalisation. Change doesn’t arrive through grand social overhaul but through domestic revolutions, one family at a time.

Esha Jessy brings Shona to life with pinpoint comedic timing coupled with measured sips of her designer Stanley cup and a look that could roast you silently. She’s savvy, a little naive, and somehow manages to carry the weight of late adolescence while making it look effortlessly chaotic.

Sarah Greenwood and Ashan Kumar play double supporting roles, both as family and as defining figures in Shona’s world. Greenwood moves seamlessly between Trish, the mother holding the household together with exhausted authority, calm but always one step away from a primal scream, and Mallory, Shona’s best friend, self-absorbed but somehow still endearing in her obliviousness.

Kumar stepped in at the last minute but completely nails his roles, playing Shona’s brother Owen with restless, ADHD-style energy and underlying vulnerability, while also bringing to life their long-lost, slimey incel podcaster father. These male characters who are “persecuted for their penis” verge on caricature, but their hatred, and paranoia—still feel real. The humour makes their words and actions more palatable, but the discomfort never really leaves. As it shouldn’t.

The brilliance of Crotchless is that it does more than show you the confusion and vitriol. It builds a bridge between generations, cutting through assumptions and letting you glimpse the heart of adolescence and parenting today. It captures the negotiation of agency, desire, and belonging in a world shaped by constant online chatter, punctuated with some gleefully absurd and genuinely funny moments.

The energy and style feel sitcom-like, with an ending a touch Scooby-Doo for my world-weary Gen X taste – neatly tied and doggedly optimistic – but why not sprinkle in some hope? Adulting is tougher than ever, and the world seems to challenge you at every turn; dressed in neon, with pings, dings and whistles – and the occasional sext or cat meme. This generation is dazzling, bewildered, and wonderfully inventive, and if we’re lucky, we might just keep up long enough to learn from them.

Crotchless, part of the Katie Lees Fellowship supporting young women in theatre, (YAY!) runs at Flight Path Theatre and closes Saturday, 8 November. For details see: https://www.flightpaththeatre.org/whats-on/crotchless-the-2025-katie-lees-fellowship-play

PS: Exactly when did Paris Hilton become the new Dolly Parton? Somewhere between reality TV and business mogul, she got wise, quotable, and culturally untouchable, and I somehow blinked through the entire rewrite while scrolling my very different internet. Ah, young people!

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