Athena review, Yard Theatre: A witty, enthralling fencing comedy

Can you be friends with someone you have to stab with a sword? That’s the question being asked in Gracie Gardner’s fencing comedy Athena, currently receiving its UK premiere at Hackney’s Yard Theatre. As the thin gauze curtain is drawn back on a stage marked with the white lines of the piste, two figures face off. Dressed in full fencing regalia, the head-to-toe whites of mesh masks and plastic breastplates obscure any sense of gender, personality or difference. For the teenage girls beneath who are desperate to fit in, it’s the perfect disguise.

The first, who goes by Athena (Millicent Wong) after “the goddess of strategic warfare and all that”, is a native New Yorker who hates music and is laser-focused on fencing – more specifically, winning. The second, suburbanite Mary Wallace (you have to say both names), played by Grace Saif, spends her days reading feminist theory on Reddit and playing board games with her friends. An unlikely friendship is struck up between the pair. Up until now, Mary Wallace has been practising against her wall, but as Athena points out, a wall “can’t hit back”.

Athena and Mary Wallace often fail to understand each other, but the competitive camaraderie between them has an understated warmth. Wong and Saif know exactly how to play off one another, whether in their physical movement as they train and work out together or while exchanging the barbs of Gardner’s fast-paced, funny dialogue. Despite both actors remaining on stage for nearly the entire show, not a single beat is missed – a testament to Grace Gummer’s expert direction.

For these mildly annoying overachievers, fencing is less a true passion than a way of padding out already impressive college applications. They try to act mature beyond their years, using the social justice dialect of the internet to seem impressive, but ultimately fail (Athena in particular) to hide their neuroses. After all, they are teenage girls – every emotion is felt so deeply. The actors are appropriately dramatic but never unbelievable. The script, too. Conversations quickly flow from crushes on teachers to Game of Thrones to acne medication, each topic a bigger deal than the last.

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While the fencing itself (directed by Claire Llewellyn) is a visually enthralling element of Athena, the sport is more a device through which conflict and resolution and friendship can form. In the rare moments when the action moves away from the fencing piste, the show loses a bit of what makes it interesting. One scene, in which Mary Wallace and Athena shed their crisp white uniforms and go out to drink and watch Athena’s sister DJ, lacks the same pace and mostly left me wondering just how two high-schoolers would get into an NYC bar anyway.

The show’s final act, the long-awaited showdown between the pair, has the opposite problem. They face off in three bouts to determine a champion, and the fighting is at its most impressive here – but at 10 minutes it just goes on too long, however accurate it is to the sport. The timer projected on the wall certainly adds to the tension, but watching the seconds count down and then restart only highlights the reduced pace in the action. After an hour of witty, rapid back-and-forth between Athena and Mary Wallace, it’s a bold way of mixing things up, but not one that entirely pays off. But it doesn’t detract from the hilarious script and Wong and Saif’s performances, which are as sharp as Athena’s blade.

‘Athena’ runs at the Yard Theatre until 23 October