What it’s like to spend 90 minutes in the women’s loo of a thumping nightclub

Powder Room is a small British film all about women and starring only women — boo-hoo, men; my heart bleeds for you all — yet it is almost entirely set in a nightclub, so whether you enjoy this film may depend on how willing you are to spend 90 minutes in such a club along with all that thumping music and the flashing lights and the scrabbling to get to the bar. As a rule, this is how I’d feel about such a prospect: I’d rather shoot myself in the head. However, I accept this doesn’t hold true for everyone and, from what I’ve learned over the years, I suspect it doesn’t hold true for most Spectator readers, who are out clubbing until all hours most nights of the week. Also, if you can put up with the thumping and the flashing and the scrabbling, you’ll find this is quite a neat take on how women talk and act plus it confirms what I have always thought: a ‘good night out’ is usually anything but, and you’d have been better off staying in to watch Masterchef. This is an adaptation of a 2009 stage play, first successfully performed in Edinburgh, and written by Rachel Hirons. The original title was When Women Wee, which seems rather unfortunate, but I can enlighten you further, for no extra charge: more often as we age until we are getting up once, twice, even three times a night, annoyingly. This is set in that nightclub and, more specifically, in the ladies toilet as our six main characters come, go, hug, row, talk, fight, take drugs, eavesdrop, throw up, and so on, all while the music thumps. (There is no respite, even in the loo.) It has, rather inevitably, been described as ‘a British Bridesmaids’, just as any female-driven comedy-drama now is, although if you think Bridesmaids sparked a revolution, you would be mistaken.