Off-Key

Off-Key comes to the Montgomery Theatre on Tuesday 10 November, 7:30pm. It's a coming-of-age drama about Black girlhood, ambition, and friendship, and it's presented by Side Eye, the award-winning collective behind Dugsi Dayz (2022) and Desperate Times (2023). They're known for staging stories by Black Muslim women and their allies, and they've picked up the Edinburgh Untapped Award (2023) and the BBC Popcorn Award for Dugsi Dayz along the way.

The play follows two best friends, Sabrin and Ruqqiyah, at a Birmingham grammar school that's practically bursting with overachievers, political meltdowns, and teenage delusion. While they're still close, they're operating on two very different wavelengths: Sabrin is secretly preparing for a life-changing music audition, while Ruqqiyah is busy orchestrating the fall of a problematic teacher. It's that specific kind of school-day tension where you're both pushing yourself in opposite directions, and the play holds the two together.

Underneath the plot, there's a larger question about what happens when the person who knows you best becomes someone you no longer recognise. It's a coming-of-age story in the truest sense — the gap that opens up between two people who grew up side by side, and the strain that puts on a bond when you realise you're not moving in the same direction anymore.

It runs for around an hour and ten minutes with no interval, so you're in for the whole stretch without a break. There's an age guidance of 12+ for some strong language and references to suicide. The curtain goes up at 7:30pm at the Montgomery Theatre on Tuesday 10 November.