Content warning: brief mention of suicide.

The Paper Birds are a devising theatre company at the forefront of the UK verbatim theatre scene. Three years ago, the company wrote to young people across the country, inviting them to ask some of their most burning questions. One asked how to make a risotto, a few asked about family issues, and a lot asked about sex. Ask Me Anything is the result.

On entering the Patrick Theatre, I was greeted by an intimate, warm performance space. With the back rows sectioned off, I joined one of the small clusters of audience members sitting in the rows closest to the stage. The set provided an encouraging first impression. A trio of teenage bedroom designs offered a strange fusion of youthful innocence and nostalgic homeliness – cluttered, intriguing, and totally convincing. As the company casually paced on stage and offered people crisps before the show began, I felt comfortable and amused, despite the fact I had no idea what to expect. I certainly couldn’t have predicated that the show would be so hard-hitting, reflective, and important.

Over an 80 minute show with no interval, Georgie Coles, Rosie Doonan, and Kylie Perry were comical, honest, and engaging. In their attempts to answer the questions of today’s youth, they incorporated their own teenage diaries, a mock sitcom filmed on stage, and a series of smashing musical numbers spanning from silly, to contemplative, and even grungy. Despite the casual and even comical opening tone, a sense of foreboding lingers over the performance. The trio are clearly reluctant to address certain ominous questions (situated menacingly in a whispering box, centre stage), and it seems that the longer the play goes on, the less progress is made in reassuring the audience.

In a dark closing scene, they finally contemplate mass loneliness, the generational disconnect, and youth suicide. The turn in tone is shocking, and the combination of chilling statistics offered on-screen and the actresses’ clear uncertainty is deeply impactful. The play’s ultimate realisation – that nobody has all the answers, but that being kind to one another and ourselves is the route to greater understanding – could not be more important in the current climate of social media perfectionism and inter-generational mistrust.

The production and technical management (provided by Nick Allsop and Darren Perry respectively) is also worth mentioning as it was extremely impressive. The multimodality of the performance was, for me, one of the most fascinating aspects of the show. A siri-esque virtual assistant, screens that played digital interviews, and even a live camera which fed to a 90s tv set were al thought-provoking reminders of the play’s main themes of technology, perception, and generational disconnection. The use of screens to show people answering the questions that the actresses themselves felt they could not (how it feels to be black and gay, or how it feels to raise a family in a same-sex couple, for instance) was an especially thoughtful touch.

Overall, I would recommend this intriguing, immersive, and deeply thought-provoking show. In a time where connection with those around you is getting harder, the greatest comfort of all can be remember one unifying fact – none of us have it all figured out, but it’s going to okay.