A teen sleepover play that's endearing but not dreamy

Washington Post

31-03-2025

Growing up can mean learning to trust your own opinions. Opinions like: Braces on boys are cute. Informed by her besties that orthodontic work does not beautify, a British 16-year-old named Shan disagrees, standing by her admiration for a crush.
'When he smiles it actually sparkles,' she points out. 'Like he's wearing jewelry, but on his teeth.'
The moment captures the reaching-toward-adulthood impulses explored in 'Sleepova,' British dramatist Matilda Feyisayo Ibini's Olivier Award-winning portrait of four Black teenage friends in East London. Now in a U.S. premiere run at Olney Theatre Center, the 2023 play boasts zesty humor and endearing characters, and its depiction of friendship is touching. But its life lessons and heartwarming epiphanies trot by in a familiar manner; the storytelling could be more succinct; and Ibini misses some opportunities to situate the protagonists within a broader world.
Jokes and empathy abound during the sleepovers and other meetups Shan (Jasmine Proctor) enjoys with her BFFs: Elle (Ciara Hargrove), a devout Christian; Funmi (Tymetrias L. Bolden), who is striving to get in touch with her Nigerian heritage; and Rey (Nykila Norman), who is confidently queer. Over the course of two-plus years, the foursome support one another through dating and grief, academic and parental pressures, personal missteps and the thorny dilemma of what to wear to the prom.
In director Paige Hernandez's production, Norman is the most persuasive performer, nailing Rey's arch ebullience ('What you got planned for us tonight then? Orgy, séance, astral projection?' the character quips at the start of one sleepover) while at other times gracefully revealing insecurity, befuddlement and shame. Hargrove has yet to fuse fully with the pious Elle, whose angst and fervor can come across as artificial, but Bolden lends flair to Funmi, a firecracker of brains and attitude who is particularly entertaining when the friends are joshing around with insidery handshakes, gestures and chants.
Proctor, while poised and funny, could better vary voice and physicality to suggest the impact of the sickle-cell disease that often lands Shan in the hospital. (With help from Zavier Augustus Lee Taylor's projections, designer Shartoya R. Jn. Baptiste's pink-toned set stands in for a medical facility, as well as the characters' bedrooms). Such indications would help ground one of the play's more powerful moments, when Shan reveals to her friends how the disease skews her present worries and future plans.
That speech — about courage and fear in the face of mortality — is one of the times when 'Sleepova' zooms out most effectively from its heroines to a bigger picture. Other broad concerns of course also surface, sometimes in brief references: homophobia, Black pride, the legacy of colonialism, sexism, the gender pay gap.
Still, there's less sustained talk about the broader world than you might expect, given that these are intelligent young women wielding smartphones. With banter-heavy conversations often sticking to the daily ups and down of the characters and their families, 'Sleepova' has less of an exhilarating-vista feeling than some other recent plays about young women — works like Clare Barron's 'Dance Nation' (at Olney in 2022), whose youngsters strain beneath society's expectations and yearn to heal the planet; or Kimberly Belflower's 'John Proctor Is the Villain' (premiered at Studio Theatre), whose mostly female school-age characters grapple with the patriarchy.
Friendship is of course another major force in human experience, and Shan, Elle, Rey and Funmi are experts on that, right down to accepting each other's prom attire. Costume designer Danielle Preston supplies garb that reflects not just the girls' personalities but their different economic backgrounds and family baggage.
Those are disparities the four pals ultimately navigate with skill. #FriendsForever.
Sleepova, through April 27 at Olney Theatre Center in Olney, Maryland. About two hours and 15 minutes, including intermission. olneytheatre.org.