FLUSH
One night. One club. 16 women.
Set in the heart of a London club, FLUSH unfolds entirely in the women’s bathroom – a space of eyeliner touch-ups, whispered confessions, and fleeting connections.
Over the course of one night, stories slip between the cracks of the cubicles: teenage girls in chaos; queer and trans lives in motion; an American woman trying to belong; a hen party unravelling; women in their 30s quietly falling apart – and rebuilding.
Bodies. Sex. Careers. Shame. Euphoria. Sisterhood.
Billie has just experienced something she can’t quite name yet. As she hovers between shock and clarity, the bathroom becomes a strange kind of shelter.
Winner of a Fringe Theatre Award, a Bitesize Award for Best Direction, and one of Financial Times’ top nine shows at 2025’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this hilarious, fast-moving, ensemble comedy-drama is told in fragments and flushes. Capturing the blur of being many things at once: bold, fragile, furious, absurd, this is an ode to the women who hold your hair back, hype you up, and sometimes just hand you loo roll.
Photography by Alex Brenner (@alexbrennerphoto) and Jake Bush (@jakebbush).
Writer April Hope Miller
Director Merle Wheldon
Set and Costume Designer Ellie Wintour
Lighting Designer Jack Hathaway
Composers Aaron Miller and Rob Wheatley (Jacana People)
Sound Designer Yanni Ng
Associate Designer Rachel Esra
Stage Manager (on Book) Lydia Wainwright
Co-Producers Launch Box Productions, Arcola Theatre
Associate Producer Kit Bromovsky (for KB Theatre Productions)
Artwork Photographer Jake Bush
Visual Artist Doug Kerr
Cast April Hope Miller, Jazz Jenkins, Joanna Strafford, Ayesha Griffiths, and Miya Ocego
Finalist for the Charlie Hartill Award 2025, Bitesize Festival Winner 2025, and awarded the EFFTA Fringe Theatre Award 2025/26.
Reviews for FLUSH
“Sound designer Yanni Ng uses Jacana People’s score sparingly but to great effect, dialling up the intensity when needed and imitating the sweaty oppressiveness of the club.”
— Maggie O’Shea for TheatreWeekly (5-stars)
“Technically, too, the show is spot on with the music blaring when needed, sound effects like toilets flushing, and the light creating special moments.”
— Saskia Wesnigk-Wood for FringeReview (5-stars, included as FringeReview’s Highly Recommended Show)
“Aided by quick-changing lights (Jack Hathaway) and club-inspired music (Yanni Ng, Jacana People), director Merle Wheldon crafts a cinematic depiction of Billie’s trauma-and-ketamine-induced haze, as clubgoers swirl around her in fast motion.”
— Lola Stakenburg for TheSpyInTheStalls
“Billie’s storyline, in particular, hits hard and in one scene she locks herself in a cubicle mid panic attack, her surroundings blurring and contorting as she tries to make sense of her night, repeating exchanges and piecing together fragments of memory.”
— Chloe Vilarrubi for The Theatre Gal (5-stars)
“Merle Wheldon directs with an intrinsic grasp of the text, ensuring the easy flow of the overlapping, yet clearcut, dialogue. Ellie Wintour’s set provides a realistic context – all porcelain and Perspex and neon lit graffiti – complemented by Yanni Ng’s sound, Aaron Miller’s and Rob Wheatley’s (Jacana People) music and Jack Hathaway’s lighting, that all slip into moments of surrealism, particularly when we start to get under Billie’s skin to see the truth.”
— Jonathan Evans for TheSpyInTheStalls (4-stars)
“Sound effects are perfectly timed whenever a girl is in a graffiti-decorated cubicle.”
— Vivien Devlin for Edinburgh Guide (5-stars)
“FLUSH’s lighting and music complimented one another and the play’s script so perfectly. With a significant focal point of the performance being on character Billie, the tech interweaved creatively with her emotions to magnify their effect, at times transporting the audience into her headspace.”
— Alice Locker for The Student (5-stars)