In June 2022 the US Supreme Court overturned the 1973 judgement in the case of Roe v Wade, which had for over forty years guaranteed women the right to an abortion until the point of foetal viability (approximately 24 weeks gestation.)
It was now up to each state to allow, limit or even ban abortions.
As a result, millions of American women lost the right to choose.
Meanwhile two 17 year-old schoolgirls sit on the sofa in a London living room room. Gina (Lucy Nicholson) is the daughter of ordained parents; she believes an unborn child must be protected. Angel (Jaz Tizzard) is her best friend, and Angel has just terminated her latest pregnancy. Angel has decided that abortion is the best form of birth control available. This time, she says, the foetus was just the size of an apricot. She wants Gina to flush what’s left of it down the loo.
Gigi Rice’s new play Apricot asks us to consider the rights and wrongs of abortion. Should it be legal to abort an unwanted pregnancy? And if it is legal, who should make that decision? Is a woman entitled to absolute control over her own body – after all, she’s almost certainly the one who’ll face the consequences of having a baby, or the emotional fallout of having a termination. Or are other people entitled to be heard? The father? The medical staff? The church? Politicians? To whom does the foetus’s life belong? And more importantly (depending on your point of view), to whom does the woman’s body belong? It wasn’t that long ago that a woman needed her husband’s permission to be sterilised, let along have an abortion.
Apricot is in many ways a dark comedy; the banter between the two girls is very entertaining. Gina worries about Angel wearing cheap knickers and tells her she shouldn’t eat her favourite chocolate bar – ‘all those hydrogenated fats!’ Despite her somewhat naïve and straightlaced attitudes, when her parents are out she drinks their Communion wine (through a straw – ‘it stains my braces!’), is considering lip fillers, fancies a boy at school, gets her contraceptive injection every three months and dreams of bedding Timothee Chalamet. But when it comes to abortion, Gina knows where she stands,
‘People don’t die from having abortions any more’ (Angel)
‘They do. The unborn do.’
Angel is more worldly wise. She has tried other methods of birth control, and rejected them all as either too unreliable or too cumbersome. She’s no longer taking the pill, and not only because it fills her body with fake hormones and makes her fat. She resents having to beg her GP to prescribe it,
‘Why should I have to ask his permission?’
Maybe she’s got a point.
Angel and Gina represent opposite ends of an argument in which just about everyone claims a stake. In the UK the evangelical far right has nothing like the power it wields in the US, but even so, women’s health clinics are regularly picketed, so much so that some now need exclusion zones to protect the women trying to access them. The pickets, meanwhile, would argue that they are entitled to try to persuade pregnant women that there are alternatives. Gina assumes that role with Angel, questioning whether God hates her friend, demanding that Angel apologise to Him, insisting on giving the aborted foetus a funeral, and even dressing up in her mother’s ecclesiastical robes to officiate at it.
Almost all of these scenes are played for – and deserve – laughs; they are well written and funny, especially Gina’s adaptation of Jerusalem as the closing hymn.
But in the background US recordings of pro-choice and anti-abortion activists remind us of the wider story, the strength of feeling on all sides, and the inevitable polarisation of views. This really isn’t a subject about which people can sit on the fence; they’re either pro-choice or they see abortion as infanticide. Apricot brings this debate into a domestic setting, and one of its strengths is that both of its two main characters are essentially human. Gina does, however, seem to become increasingly obsessive, and indeed volatile, as time passes; the audience may begin to question her sanity, and this undermines her opinions, inevitably making Angel seem far more mature and thoughtful (she is, after all, about to start a Philosophy degree…) than her friend.
One of the problems I did have with the play is the question of how Gina and Angel were best friends in the first place, given their radically different views. Even if they are presumed to have been close for years, would an issue like this not have driven them apart? Gina is highly judgemental, while Angel follows a path that few girls (at least the ones I know of) would feel reasonable, and whilst I understand why Rice has made them so extreme, I feel that some of our right wing media would have a field day with Angel, who would be used to confirm the idea that many older people in particular have, ie that young women are feckless and irresponsible.
Rice also touches on the tricky situation that arises if the father of a foetus disagrees with the woman’s choice, whether that choice is to abort or to keep it. Jaz is reluctant to tell Gina just who the father is, but soon his identity is revealed and he wants a say. I did feel that this scene was a little truncated (perhaps to fit the standard Fringe timeslot); it would be interesting to hear more from all three characters as to why, or why not, the father should be involved in this decision.
It is always good to see important issues aired in Fringe productions, and especially so when they are not the topics du jour. Although Apricot is perhaps a little rough around the edges, combining serious content with comedy is a challenge to which this cast rises, doing a good job of handling sensitive material well and entertainingly.
WARNING: If you’re thinking of seeing this show, it’s important to note that its themes are explored graphically and its comedy is often dark.
Apricot is at Venue 53, theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall, at 12.05 every day until 10th August. Tickets here.
