Book, Music and Lyrics: Yve Blake
Director: Paige Rattray
It’s familiar territory for those who were teens when Zayn Malik left One Direction, when #CutForBeiber trended, and when aligning yourself to a particular boy-band designated your social grouping. It’s the electrifying madness of being a supporter, a megafan, a fangirl of a pop star.
On its world tour from Australia to London, Yve Blake’s Fangirls is a love letter to teen girls and a message to love whatever they want to with their chests, without apology. Edna (Jasmine Elcock) is a lonely 14-year-old, who feels she has to ‘swallow the scream’ of her woes and worries as a scholarship kid amongst the rich kids. But even when friends Jules (Mary Malone) and Brianna (Miracle Chance) ditch her, Edna still has her one true love: her favourite boyband member, known to those on the inside simply as ‘Harry’. Finding no escape at school, she retreats to the world of online fanfiction, when it’s her and Harry against the world.
Ebony Williams’ dynamic choreography and an effervescent ensemble provide the electric excitement of a pop concert. Wide screens project the hair flips and winks of boy-band heartthrob Harry (Thomas Grant) making Hammersmith’s Lyric akin to Wembley Arena. The electric feel of a pop concert encourages the audience to respond appropriately to the excellent cast, vocal displays and punchy dance moves, received with delight from a young audience, ready to react with the abandon of teens at their favourite concert.
Yve Blake’s dialogue is a nice combination of comedic and teenager without coming across as ‘what adults think teenagers say’. Those of age during Bieber-fever know having a song called Actually Dead is not out of place. There’s also enough self-awareness to steer away from over-production, particularly the comedy and saccharine songs that really land when band members earnestly sing lyrics such as ‘I’ll buy you really cute pets’, ‘you’re a cool girl with the hair like that’, and the emotional, from a suitably vague social justice number, ‘dance, and think of the children’
All of the cast are impressive on stage. Elcock as the clever and dysfunctional Edna has a familiar and moving relationship with her mother Caroline (Debbie Kurup), But what’s captivating is that Fangirls captures the intensity and accompanying loneliness of feeling obsessed with something as a teen: ‘Nobody feels like I feel… in your eyes, I’m someone I want to be’.
It’s a lover letter to the power in the dedication, the intense devotion of fangirls and the frustration of being labelled ‘psycho’ and ridiculed in comparison to the praise boys get for crying and shouting at football.
Your first pop concert, your first crush, the heady adrenalin of being a teenager. Fangirls reminds us of it all.
Runs until 24 August 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Electric excitement of a pop concert
