Single White Female - Theatre Royal Bath.

Saturday 23td May 2026
"Single White Female"
Theatre Royal Bath
⭐⭐⭐ (3 Stars)

Based on the 1992 film, Single White Female has made it to the stage and is currently touring around the UK, adapted for the stage by Rebecca Reid. The play follows Mother (Allie) and Daughter (Bella) as they welcome in a new flatmate (Hedy) to earn some extra cash as Allie adjusts to a life after divorce. The show is filled with plenty of twists and turns that left me on the edge of my seat. But what left me with a little bit of doubt was the modernisation of the play, placing it within the current time period instead of the era of the film, and phrases and trends are randomly shoe horned in to create relevance but comes across as quite cringe and unrealistic.

Leading the cast was Lisa Faulkner as Allie and Kym Marsh as Hedy. Lisa played a believable worried parent while also portraying the vulnerability that the character has within her.

Kym played an unsettling Hedy, having me convinced that she was truly crazy by the end of the show. Both together played into each other’s strengths and delivered performances that only added to the thriller. Another shout out performer would have to be Amy Snudden who played Allie’s daughter, Bella. The waves of emotions and mood swings were constant within the character and Amy’s switch between these emotions were perfect, especially during the final sequence.

All of the actors did their best with what they were given even though most of the script was not bad, there is definitely room for improvement.

The forced lines of ozempic and Vinted would have been fine on their own but to place them into multiple scenes just became weird and the characters genuine voices became lost.

This is only here to create relevance to place the play in a modern age but the play is making it too obvious and almost shoving it down the audience’s throats. To say, this is only really the case at the beginning of the play and once the story’s plot picked up I was hooked and felt involved in the story.

The set and costume were designed by Morgan Large, with lighting design by Jason Taylor, and worked really well with the narrative. The set was very simple, a high rise apartment with cracks and a large window in the back that overlooks more buildings. All of the scenes took place in this apartment and even though characters mentioned other settings, such as the party, there was no need to include them into the set as the narrative did a great job at giving the audience a description of what took place through the character’s voices. The time jumps also did a great job at moving along the pace of the plot without the need to change locations, and no scene really dragged on for too long.

For the costume design, they were very minimal and natural that clearly represents the modern era, working very well to keep the play grounded and realistic. Bella’s costume perfectly captured the somewhat rebellious clothes that a typical teenager would wear (when she comes back from the party) while also having quite reserved clothes that would have been picked out by her mother, but with a pop of colour compared to Allie’s dull clothes. Hedy’s costumes changed a few times throughout the play and (not to spoil anything) worked well as her character developed, matching the uneasy feeling that the character has throughout.

The lighting was very simple, having usual apartment lighting whilst also using a weak spotlight during the dark scenes, which was not distracting enough to take me out of the story, above the stage, a blue light was used with a baby’s crib as a way to enter Hedy's memory which recurred throughout the play. Strobe lighting was also used throughout the play to emphasize the broken house with flickering switches and also used for gun shots.

For the sound -arranged by Max Pappenheim three small mics were placed at the front of the stage, which worked well for most scenes. But for scenes that took place near the back and when the characters were talking from their rooms, the diction became quite unclear and difficult to understand which took me out of the flow of the story.

Overall, Single White Female has its flaws but made up for it through its engaging plot and great acting. Being the world premiere of the play, it is already quite stable but with a few tweaks it could feel more real from the very beginning. A small note I also have to make is that as a younger member in the mostly older audience, the jokes felt like they should have been targeted at me but I did not find them very funny, but the older members did but I think this is expected as that was the expected age for the audience.

Single White Female is definitely a show to try out and is running in a number of locations around the UK until 13th June 2026.

Written By: Callum England