Southwark Playhouse puts comic books on stage again although we're in significantly
darker territory than
Usagi Yojimbo with Marielle Heller's
The Diary of a Teenage
Girl, which adapts Phoebe Gloeckner's graphic novel set in 1976 San Francisco.
Minnie (Rona Morison) is 15, the same age her mother Charlotte (Rebecca Trehearn)
was when she had her. She might not be adding another teenage pregnancy to the
family but her own sexual awakening is far from healthy, as she's been seduced by
her mother's seedy boyfriend Monroe (Jamie Wilkes.) It's an ongoing affair and
although Minnie hasn't particularly fooled herself that it's love, she's still
pretty smitten. With an out-of-her-depth mother fond of a number of recreational
drugs, and a seemingly more sensible ex-stepfather, Pascal (Mark Carroll,) who
writes her letters encouraging her to keep studying, but has something of a distant,
academic interest in her himself, Minnie's left to find her own way.
