Erin Harrington reviews The Ballad of Briar Grant, written by Jack McGee, directed by Lia Kelly, presented by Squash Co Arts Collection, at Little Andromeda, Wednesday 6 August 2025.
In Jack McGee’s new play The Ballad of Briar Grant, Hayley (Phoebe Caldeiro) finds herself working in an apple orchard in the south of France after her co-dependent relationship with her lifelong best friend (or best frenemy?) Briar Grant falls to bits. She’s depressed and unsettled, despite the beautiful locale, moping her way through her unexpected OE. One afternoon she’s approached by the only other Kiwi on the gang, a confrontational, slightly manic and very shouty woman who is also, coincidentally, called Briar Grant (Anna Barker). This new Briar is self-aware enough to know that she’s a total pain in the ass, and that her knack for eking conflict out of benign scenarios has left her unhappy and lonely. She asks for divine intervention – to be someone slightly nicer. Hayley wants Briar the first back in her life, maybe, but instead gets this one. Surrounded by trees and crates of apples, the pair clash, spectacularly.
The Ballad of Briar Grant thoughtfully scratches away at issues of identity, anxiety and self-actualisation. Under Lia Kelly’s direction, it uses a character-centric story that is small (in the sense of being contained, specific and intimate) to speak to bigger questions about how we can recognise and knock ourselves out of past patterns of unhelpful behaviour. McGee’s script finds a good balance between action and self-reflection, letting Hayley and Briar explore the overwhelming nature of their emotions and personal crises without letting them off the hook. (Oh, not to be young again, says this 40-something.) Motifs of doubling and shifts in artistic perspective frame the characters’ own desires for change. Well-placed gags ensure there’s lightness. The emotional climax pulls us out of the naturalistic setting in a very satisfying way, disrupting the action, and offering Hayley a welcome moment of epiphany. Caldeiro and Barker have great chemistry, and clearly a lot of trust in one another.
This is also a well-presented show, with a sympathetic score and some thoughtful staging and set design, including the many, many apples that scatter further across the stage as the pair’s arguments intensify. It manages to grapple (mostly successfully) with the use of phones as a means of talking with absent characters and facilitating monologues. I do think there’s room for a bit more control in the performances – in managing fidgeting and breath, and in finding a more careful balance between Briar’s high volume, high friction persona and Hayley’s more low-key emotional wallowing as the action builds. It makes good use of Little Andromeda’s black box space, though, and ends really nicely with satisfying and well-staged vignettes that show the power of a change in perspective. New scripted work has been pretty thin on the ground recently, so kudos to Squash Co Arts Collective: it’s heartening to see the form alive and well.
The Ballad of Briar Grant plays at Little Andromeda until Saturday 9 August 2025.
Flat City Field Notes 