Producers of the recent CADs play Bunny – a play about a young woman called Katie from Luton – rightly made note of content warnings on the event page, including racial tensions and issues regarding sex. Though it seems they forgot to include rampant classism.

Bunny is a monologue, originally written by Jack Thorne and performed in Cambridge last Thursday. The play centres around Katie finding herself in a situation in which her boyfriend, Abe, and his friends are tracking down Abe’s attacker. Throughout this, Katie gives insight into her own life. Significant parts of the play entail Abe’s friend, Asif, asking Katie to remove her underwear. Whilst issues of consent are poignant to the play, they’re surrounded by issues of racism and classism – these two things, in my opinion, being the most consistent aspects of it.

“What I found most problematic about the play was the presentation of working class tropes in the context of comedy.”

Being from Luton, what I found most problematic about the play was the presentation of working class tropes in the context of comedy. For example, poverty at times was used a source of humour: Katie explains that she went through a ‘phase’ of shoplifting – which provoked laughter from the audience, indicating a lack of sensitivity as to how poverty manifests itself.

Crime is also normalised when referencing particularly deprived areas of Luton. For example, Katie mentions Marsh Farm – its ‘shit estates’ and high possession of firearms– and jokes that in a civil war, Luton would be the capital of Britain, drawing laughs from the audience.

More problematic was the patronising presentation of Katie as a working-class anomaly because of her intelligence, exacerbating the prejudice that working-class people are less intelligent. She says a number of times that she is ‘clever’, citing her GCSE results as evidence – having attained 2 As and 6 Bs – but her assurance of cleverness soon becomes more like child-like pride. More problematic still is that whenever she uses a long or complex word, she reminds the audience that this is a ‘good word’.

It is obviously an issue of paramount importance that working-class towns are not portrayed in this way at an institution such as Cambridge, dominated by students from a middle-class bracket, as it can exacerbate prejudiced and uninformed views about the people who inhabit them. In my short time at Cambridge, this has not been uncommon. On the first day of Freshers’ Week, for example, on having been asked my name and where I was from, and replying “Katie from Luton”, I was corrected with: “Do you mean LuTon?”, emphasising the fact that I had dropped my ’t’s.

“The play clearly intends to highlight issues about race in Luton specifically, but in doing so over-simplifies them.”

Racial tensions were also at the forefront of the play; phrases such as ‘black devil’ are used by other characters within the play toward Abe, Katie’s boyfriend. The play clearly intends to highlight issues about race in Luton specifically, but in doing so over-simplifies them: for example, Katie says of Bury Park (a predominantly Muslim area) that “you’ll barely see a white face,” and that the white and Asian communities of Luton “don’t really mix together.” The racial stereotyping is inescapable throughout the play, yet the publicity for it centres around the sexuality of Katie, describing the play as a ‘coming of age tale’.

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All this criticism is directed at the play itself; the producers didn’t write the play and therefore don’t bear blame for its content, and the acting was very good. However, it is difficult to see why this play was chosen. Perhaps to provoke discussion of the issues mentioned here, but if that is the case then the play would greatly benefit from more acknowledgement of its discussion of its multi-faceted contentious areas