The Student | Tamsin Dunlop
4 Sept 2025
★★★★★ | The C Word is a sublimely curated play of hugely compelling associate art curators: it’s funny, it’s intelligent, and it’s all so incredibly entertaining. 5 stars!
"I was NOT a pretty 14-year-old!”. Ouch — five women are waiting for their interviews for the same associate art curator job, they get interrupted by a Picasso “hystoracle” feminist monster entity, and things are getting ugly.
The C Word has a pretty bonkers plot, which makes it difficult to convey just how quickly it develops into something immensely profound, funny, and meaningful. We begin with the competing women playing at pretend niceties as they wait for their turn to interview with the big boss: feigning interest in each other’s weekend plans, the faux feminist women-supporting-women of it all. When, suddenly, the aforementioned monster storms the scene and makes them all get fucking for real with one another.
The play unravels into a stunningly sharp and incredibly funny hour of comedy-fantasy: one by one, we are given insight into each woman’s personal psyche. Their insecurities, their jealousies, their resentments: it’s gloriously liberating, with the niceties of the opening scene completely abandoned.
We have Georgie (2015 Buzzfeed girlboss), Mona (depressed), Venus (airhead nepobaby), Olly (scary slut), and Pearl (pretty and full of suppressed rage). Each character is so wonderfully portrayed, and so incredibly well-studied: they are all so believable and so uniquely hilarious in their twisted neuroses. The performers are all exceptional, comedically gifted with the gravitas to evoke real emotion from the audience too. It’s 10/10 performances across the board, bolstered by a sensational script.
The C Word has plenty of one-liners for the ages (including a line reading of “just a little flame retardant I like to call… feminism” which has played in my head ever since), but there’s also many references to much more serious ground. A heated discussion on pretty privilege ends with each woman hatefully accusing the other of being “perfect”, ruminations on the pointlessness of art (“a load of 17th century pornography”), and a beautiful scene where one character admits gleefully to hating all the others. There’s such joy in each open flouting of the feminine social rules: a superfluous “…bitch!”, a gorgeously personal insult “girlboss in the derogatory sense”, and a brutal takedown of… the singular MAN character.
Ultimately, The C Word is a sublimely curated play of hugely compelling associate art curators: it’s funny, it’s intelligent, and it’s all so incredibly entertaining. 5 stars!
