The Wasp is a taut two-hander about former schoolmates who meet again after years apart. Originally produced in 2015 at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s play centres on Heather (Cassandra Hercules), a wealthy married woman, and Carla (Serin Ibrahim), who is struggling financially, and with a fifth child on the way. It doesn’t take long for Heather to make a shocking proposal – and that’s just the beginning of the unexpected journey that this intriguing thriller has in store.
Despite the seeming incongruity of their meeting, the women’s shared backstory unfolds in tantalising morsels. As children, it was Carla who held all the power – the bully who made Heather’s school years a misery through jealousy, cruelty and violence. Now the tables are turned: Heather, polished and composed, has engineered this reunion as a form of long-delayed revenge, deploying the same psychological pressure on Carla who is now broke, vulnerable and running out of options. Each revelation feeds into the next, gradually illuminating the cold logic behind Heather’s escalating proposals.
As the story sharpens, the tone shifts registers – from dark humour to sarcasm, playfulness to torturous taunting. It’s sometimes hard to know whether the laughs are intentional, but that ambiguity is very much part of Malcolm’s design: here humour is a close cousin to horror.
The staging can feel static in the first act – the two actresses circling each other in a loop, lights flickering to the sound of buzzing insects. In the middle of scenes the lights dim, interrupting the flow, the women shift position, and the previous few words are replayed, sometimes verbatim, sometimes with altered emphasis and style. It’s a device that keeps the audience unsteady, uncertain of what is real – which is clearly the point. The narrative of unsettled perspectives and secret intent holds right to the show’s final, genuinely shocking moment. The play has echoes of Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, and the calculating wife who catfishes her own husband is a device that risks feeling over-familiar – though Malcolm gives it enough to keep it fresh.
Under James Haddrell’s direction, both actresses eventually find their footing, and both deliver good performances within the play’s many demands. Ibrahim’s Carla is tough and vulnerable in equal measure, though occasionally her voice felt a little muffled from where I was sitting. She has real fun with a woman who chain-smokes through pregnancy and swings between defensive and aggressive with barely a beat between. The heavier lifting falls to Hercules as Heather, whose final monologue is directed almost straight at the audience – a calculated invitation to examine our own moral compass, and ask what we might do under the same pressure.
Malcolm packs in a great deal — class, privilege, motherhood, infertility, revenge and the long shadow of childhood cruelty — and like the wasp of the title, the play does get under your skin. But it occasionally strains under the weight of its own ambition, and a few too many twists tip it towards melodrama before the curtain falls. A gripping, well-performed night out, and it delivers much of the sting it promises.
Writer: Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
Director: James Haddrell
Designer: Jana Lakatos
Cast: Serin Ibrahim, Cassandra Hercules
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes including interval
Until 30 May – then transferring to Greenwich Theatre 4-12 September
Photo Credit: Ross Kernahan