WANTED ****

Sometimes in life, you just have to push back.

Erica (Eleanor Higgins) meets Jessie (Naomi Denny); both lesbians, electricity is in the air along with pounding dance music. They bond over a shared love of Tony Soprano and Lindsay Lohan, but their lives are far from straightforward. Living in urban Croydon, Erica is constantly short of money, maxing out her overdraft. Jessie at least has steady employment in retail… that is, until events conspire against her and she is fired.

Erica’s sense of injustice at the universe is heightened when her mobile phone is stolen. The subsequent police interview does little to restore her faith in natural justice. During a visit to a nightclub, a man is overly persistent and, while fending him off, his mobile phone slips out of his jacket. Erica pockets it, probably without thinking about the consequences.

Erica and Jessie are sucked into small-time criminality. Their ground rules as to victim selection lend them a veneer of victimless crime: they will only target rich, white men, leaning into a vague sense of pushing back against the patriarchy. After a shaky start, they become proficient at theft and fraud, small-time hustlers now.

Suddenly more financially self-sufficient, Erica begins to date Stevie (Kit Sinclair) and becomes smitten. However, Stevie has a more clearly defined moral compass, and once she uncovers Erica’s various subterfuges, there is no future for the relationship.

Jessie has got her life back on track and extricated herself from these criminal activities. However, when Erica is robbed of her stolen stock and cash, she is reluctantly pulled into one last job to help her friend, with dramatic consequences.

There is a cacophony of noise at the outset: Alabama 3’s Woke Up This Morning competing with police sirens sets the scene for the relentless pace of this production. The action is interspersed with a series of voicemails from the unseen Mark. These calls offer a small insight into the impact of crime on one of the victims, but also serve to ramp up the pressure on Erica.

Higgins portrays the rudderless and at times frantic Erica with aplomb, casting light on her life choices. Denny’s Jessie is layered, in turns measured but fragile.

Wanted is partly predicated on Higgins’ own experiences, but at its core it is a story about injustice. Gender inequality, wealth division, the criminal justice system and nepotism all come under Higgins’ crosshairs in this comedy-drama.