Review: FIREBIRD, Southwark Playhouse

Content warning: this review contains references to child sex abuse

The culture wars surrounding grooming gangs have never felt more poisonous. With the right-wing press champing at the bit to use organised child abuse as fodder for anti-immigrant narratives, and the details of how such abuse actually occurs hidden in the weeds of abandoned inquiries, there is something to be said for taking a step back and returning our focus to the lives of the young victims.

In this light, it seems like the perfect time for a revival of Phil Davies’ gutwrenching three-hander from 2015, Firebird. Mollie Milne is 14-year-old Tia, a confident, standoffish girl from a rough Glasgow neighbourhood who becomes ensnared in a child prostitution ring run by AJ (Taqi Nazeer), a charismatic supposed youth worker who “prefers hanging out with people your age”.

This is a highly character-driven piece, and as such Milne and Nazeer’s performances provide a dynamism that makes a 90-minute runtime feel rapid. Milne, in her London stage debut, infuses Tia’s early interactions with AJ with a blend of streetwise defensiveness, fear and curiosity. As her abuse worsens, there is a certain tragic heroism in Tia’s attempts to fight back against a system that has failed her.

Nazeer, meanwhile, lurches from suave to emotionally volatile and back again in his role as AJ, in a way that takes the audience along with Tia as she tries to figure him out. He is also dual cast as a overworked and unempathetic police officer, and exudes a similar power to manipulate Tia in that role.

Both Davie and Milne are also conscious of not letting Tia’s victimhood deny her complexity. Her initial racism towards AJ and other Asians in the local kebab shop feels sudden and brutal, even when we can see where the narrative is heading (it’s made clear later that those abusing Tia also included white men). After escaping her abusers, Tia is increasingly sexually aggressive towards her friend Katie (Kelise Gordon-Harrison), which reads as hurt people hurting people, leading us to a twist that leaves Tia a morally ambivalent figure, uncomfortably so.

This production, directed by Marlie Haco, has made some attempts to differentiate itself from its predecessors in the mid-2010s. The action has been moved from Rochdale (where Davies is from) to Glasgow, without much impact other than some vague nods to the universality of the issue. There are a few moments that gesture at how social media might have changed Tia’s experiences in the last decade, but they’re offset by some outdated references, including to Britney Spears perfume.

Still, Haco’s production breathes new life into the source material in other ways. Most of the action takes place on a raised platform with a moveable ceiling, that slides up and down as Tia’s world opens up and constricts. In many of his scenes, Nazeer (as both AJ and the police officer) lurks around the base of the stage, at the level of the front row of audience seating, underscoring Tia’s isolation and vulnerability.

Firebird certainly leaves us feeling empathy for Tia and others like her, but it also doesn’t stop there. This fresh, visually engaging production presents trauma in all its complexities and contradictions, and forces us not to look away.

Firebird plays at Southwark Playhouse Borough until 1 August

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