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The House Party
112 pages, Paperback
Published June 17, 2025
3 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 27, 2025
LOVED THIS!!! I will definitely be using some of this material for my seniors and as soon as I can find a production I will be buying tickets. I got so swept along with this play in fact, that I actually audibly gasped when I was reading on the tube and got to the end of Act 2. Got some funny looks but I was so engrossed I didn’t care.
Very powerful and yet naturalistic writing that has also made me want to read Miss Julie by August Strindberg, which is the original piece that inspired the writing of this one.
Bravo Laura Lomas. I look forward to reading and watching more of your work.
Very powerful and yet naturalistic writing that has also made me want to read Miss Julie by August Strindberg, which is the original piece that inspired the writing of this one.
Bravo Laura Lomas. I look forward to reading and watching more of your work.
March 9, 2025
Yet another rewrite of Strindbergs Miss Julie but a decent enough yoof version. No surprise that it has Frantic Assembly involved.
February 26, 2025
Tense. Exhilarating. Nail-biting. An emotional journey that’s worth the read.
I was lucky enough to see the world-premiere production of The House Party at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester in May 2024 and I bought the script during the interval. I spent Act One in a state of pure anxiety, physically at the edge of my seat watching this retelling of Miss Julie unfold. Revisiting the text 6 months later reminded all the reasons I considered this play to be one of the best things I saw in 2024.
The story is quite simple: two friends at a birthday party, one on a destructive streak whilst the other is trying to contain everything, neglecting her own life in the meanwhile. Being a retelling of an older text, you could imagine a lot of the story to feel outdated, but Laura Lomas’ text is anything but. This modernisation is fresh and exciting, updating the text so beautifully to reflect today’s teenage generation in a new light.
Lomas is also one of the few writers who have beautifully captured Gen-Z lingo in such an honest and raw way. So too often I’ve read teen dialogue that is cringy and out of touch, easily showing the author’s age, but Lomas is different. She captures my generation’s trademark humour, how this undercuts every serious conversation, but doesn’t allow it to ruin the serious moments of the text either, striking the perfect balance. The opening scene of the play is a noteworthy highlight.
The one aspect of the story I still have reservations about is the play’s final act, taking place a decade later to show where these characters are and how they view the events of the story with some reflection. Part of me wishes that the play ended with Act 3, ending on some uncertainty as to the fate of Julie, but I get the thematic reasonings of including that final conversation a decade after the events of the party, especially when updating the original play. It doesn’t diminish the final piece completely (unless it is the only Act to be after the intermission, like what happened in the Chichester production) but can feel at times like an anti-climactic ending from the emotional drama of the previous three acts.
Despite this, The House Party is a fantastic new play, and I look forward to its continued success with the tour in 2025 and beyond. It reads just as fantastically as it was performed, being one of the tensest plays I have experienced in a while and it really shows that theatrical storytelling is in safe hands in the future.
I was lucky enough to see the world-premiere production of The House Party at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester in May 2024 and I bought the script during the interval. I spent Act One in a state of pure anxiety, physically at the edge of my seat watching this retelling of Miss Julie unfold. Revisiting the text 6 months later reminded all the reasons I considered this play to be one of the best things I saw in 2024.
The story is quite simple: two friends at a birthday party, one on a destructive streak whilst the other is trying to contain everything, neglecting her own life in the meanwhile. Being a retelling of an older text, you could imagine a lot of the story to feel outdated, but Laura Lomas’ text is anything but. This modernisation is fresh and exciting, updating the text so beautifully to reflect today’s teenage generation in a new light.
Lomas is also one of the few writers who have beautifully captured Gen-Z lingo in such an honest and raw way. So too often I’ve read teen dialogue that is cringy and out of touch, easily showing the author’s age, but Lomas is different. She captures my generation’s trademark humour, how this undercuts every serious conversation, but doesn’t allow it to ruin the serious moments of the text either, striking the perfect balance. The opening scene of the play is a noteworthy highlight.
The one aspect of the story I still have reservations about is the play’s final act, taking place a decade later to show where these characters are and how they view the events of the story with some reflection. Part of me wishes that the play ended with Act 3, ending on some uncertainty as to the fate of Julie, but I get the thematic reasonings of including that final conversation a decade after the events of the party, especially when updating the original play. It doesn’t diminish the final piece completely (unless it is the only Act to be after the intermission, like what happened in the Chichester production) but can feel at times like an anti-climactic ending from the emotional drama of the previous three acts.
Despite this, The House Party is a fantastic new play, and I look forward to its continued success with the tour in 2025 and beyond. It reads just as fantastically as it was performed, being one of the tensest plays I have experienced in a while and it really shows that theatrical storytelling is in safe hands in the future.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews