Soho theatre, London
The Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner playwright returns with a production about a drama student researching Black British history
Jasmine Lee-Jones made the fiercest of debuts with her audacious two-hander Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner. This one-woman play is gentler and less febrile … until it throws a surprise punch that casts the play in a new hallucinatory light. Performed as well as written by Lee-Jones, it artfully takes us into a multi-voiced and multi-stranded story that seems ambling, perhaps even unruly, until the twist reveals its underlying discipline.
Directed by Anna Himali Howard, Lee-Jones plays a disaffected drama student, Jaz, who is pigeonholed into bit parts in a Restoration drama module. In her frustration, Jaz begins an archival exploration into Black British actresses of the past and an 18th-century runaway slave turned actor, Celia Edlyne, is brought to life.