Spare Room – theSpace ★★

Student houses are strange ecosystems. Leave a group of young adults unsupervised for long enough and the place begins to generate its own climate. Empty bottles multiply like weeds. Dirty washing forms geological layers. Conversations drift between friendship and cruelty with alarming speed. In Spare Room, that atmosphere hangs over the stage like a gathering storm cloud, promising rain long before the first drop falls.Blue Duck Theatre Company’s play positions itself squarely within contemporary conversations about Andrew Tate, the manosphere and modern masculinity. Jodie moves into a student house-share hoping to escape troubles at home and begin again. Instead, she finds herself thrown into a world fuelled by alcohol, drugs and a form of masculinity that often feels one bad decision away from becoming something far darker. It is unquestionably tackling important material.The difficulty is that the world it presents occasionally feels less like contemporary student life and more…