Out of Love, Orange Tree Theatre

Out of Love opens at the Orange Tree Theatre in January, following a successful run at the Fringe Festival this year. The Stage enthused about the 'funny, tender and well-crafted celebration of the richness of female friendship', while critic Lynn Gardner noted how there is 'more than a touch of Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels' in the portrayal of two girls growing up together.

The play follows two girls, Grace and Lorna, who grew up as neighbours in the same northern town and were inseparable as children. Their lives begin to drift apart when Lorna gets offered a place at university, whilst Grace gets pregnant and, consequently, is stuck in her home town.

The friendship between the smart, loud and bossy Grace, and the calmer and more sensible Lorna acts as a focal point within the time-hopping, non-chronological structure of the play. Cook examines how their friendship adapts and alters over time in her sharply scripted drama.

Relationships between friends are frequently pushed to one side in theatre, in favour of a focus on romantic relationships. The sparseness of the staging and production here enable female friendship to take centre stage, with almost no props, and Hasan Dixon playing all of the men in the two girls’ lives.

Cook won the George Devine Award in 2013 for Most Promising Playwright, and the multitude of of 4 and 5-star reviews from Out of Love’s Edinburgh premiere are a reflection of her talents, as well as the skill of actresses Katie Elin-Salt and Sally Mesham.