Chloe likes to hang out in a cave; Jacob grew up in a brothel. Jacob’s life is hidden in darkness; Chloe’s is increasingly exposed to the light. They are teenagers lost in a world that doesn’t value them, searching for ways out. And their experiences pose questions - do we only exist if other people are watching us? Do we only have worth if other people value us?

The Bird and The Bee are two loosely linked plays by emerging young writers, Al Smith and Matt Hartley. The Bird, written by Smith, is Jacob’s story. Born into a dark-red womb-like world, Jacob (Tom Ferguson) is a Dostoyevskian anti-hero. The son of an immigrant Russian prostitute, his body was twisted by forceps in the birth canal and Jacob has spent much of his days locked in a room, imprisoned for his own protection from a world his mother fears would be too cruel. His tale, told primarily in monologue, has the feel of a short story more than a play. The limited intrusion of other voices heightens the sense that even when Jacob begins his life beyond the red room, he is still isolated. Jacob is in the world, but increasingly invisible – people will not meet his eye. He is bruised, and starts to retreat. He becomes one of the people we ignore every day – a foreign cleaner. But it is in this job that he now, conversely, becomes blind to others. Working in an office block at night, he strikes sightlessly against the world that has ignored him, finally effecting an impact.

Chloe’s brother is dead famous: Chloe’s brother has died in a traffic accident. Chloe is the protagonist of Hartley’s The Bee. Her story is about how we are meant to feel - and it’s about falsity and fame and forgotten places. You see, Chloe is a slightly awkward teenager: she wears shapeless black clothes and only has five friends on Facebook, until her brother dies – then she becomes the focus of a community’s grief. The Bee opens with a brilliant and charmingly cynical parody of what it means to have ‘Facebook friends’. From here on in it examines our post Diana delight in gushing, cathartic emotion. Chloe is portrayed beautifully and naturalistically by Rebecca Whitehead – she’s a likeable, normal girl, but she’s told that her inability to express her grief is abnormal: ‘You should look upset’. In a play that deals with the crassness of the 21st century and the transitory slang of the internet, it’s interesting to have Hamlet and the ‘shapes of grief’ echo in your head.
The Bird and The Bee showcase some beautiful writing, though stylistically they don’t sit comfortably together, despite a plot link. Where The Bird is melancholic in tone, The Bee is acerbic, but both are capable of lyricism - The Bee providing an astonishing simile about a no-hope town, ‘It’s like people have told us how beautiful dreams can be, but then no one will let us sleep’. These two shows from writers in progress are thought-provoking, and promise a lot.