Review: Chewing Gum Dreams, Bush Theatre

To dream of chewing gum supposedly signifies an inability to express oneself. Hackney teenager Tracey Gordon has all the words and a fair few ideas, but no one’s really listening, let alone taking her seriously. Such, suggests fledgling playwright Michaela Coel in this peppery one-woman show, is the teenager’s lot: the pressure is to fit in – with one’s peers, with imposed expectations, with the wider system – and the process of self-discovery is as much about repression as revelation.

To classify Tracey as a teenager isn’t enough, though; she’s more particular than that. Black, female and based in one of London’s poorest areas, Tracey’s voice barely registers at all. Nor, it seems, is there much hope for change; university doesn’t factor in her ambitions or others’ expectations of her and, as she says, “I ain’t smart enough to be somebody, but I’m smart enough to know I’m nobody.”

All that means tuts in pharmacy queues and unsolicited gropes in plain view. It means standing on a doorstep and being shooed away by your white boyfriend’s mother. It means being unfairly singled out in a “colour-coded class”.

Yet, that’s not to dub this a downbeat portrait of social injustice. Coel absolutely captures the onrush of adolescence, where all too adult experiences, both positive and negative, career into the carefree existence of childhood. One moment Tracey’s out of her depth, treading water against a friend’s pregnancy; the next she’s in the dreamy, head-swimming haze of a teenage crush just starting to kindle. Sometimes it’s concrete, as bruises surface on a friend’s cheek, and sometimes it’s all fireworks, when, on the number 67 bus, you find a hand on your knee.

Coel’s also a vivid caricaturist – both in writing and performance. You really get a sense of those around Tracey: Fat Lisa, with her bag of contraband contraceptives; Aaron the brickwall that won’t take no for an answer, and her horizontal classmate with all the latest about inceptive conceptions.

This is a sparky debut, as made by the plosive writing as by the witty performance in Che Walker’s production. Coel can really handle a room, flicking flirtatious eye contact our way, then railing at us for injustices suffered. Also, what a pleasure to see an audience literally bopping in their seats pre-show to the burst of garage. For Coel to extend that communal conviviality into the show itself, largely with a snappy sense of humour, deserves real credit. She’s certainly one to watch; no chewing gum dreams for her.