Fangirls - Lyric Hammersmith

I'm guessing Sonia Friedmaan is feeling left out of the "Six" phenomenon .

If anyone’s got Seatplan credit they are on sale for minimum uplift. Got two front row seats for the first Saturday night for £12 each.

“It’s meant to be this bad, right?”

Interval time. Quote from the row behind (not the same person who was saying “During my first protest at the White House…”

I’m rather annoyed with myself for several reasons:

I paid £7.20 for my ticket in Row M through TodayTix. If I’d held out I could have had a Row D ticket for £6.

I had to leave a work event with free beer early.

On the plus side, I’ve seen over 100 shows this year and this is in the top 100%. Only behind White Girl in Danger. What do you mean that was last year? I’ll reconsider.

I applaud the Hammersmith Lyric for taking a chance on this musical. They’ve spent money. There a large cast with terrible Australian accents. Some nice effects. Some cheering at the back of the Stalls.

There’s Thomas Grant, who I’ve seen in plays but never a musical. He’s wonderful and I hope he has more to do in the second half,

Miracle Chance, who is so wonderful and I’ve never seen so restrained.

Max James Hodge makes a perfect lifeguard. He was so good in ArtsEd. He gets to show off his gym work here.

Debbie Kurup should be leading Mamma Mia.

I think maybe Australian audiences need everything spelling out to them.

Let’s see what Act 2 brings. Sometimes these shows are so bad, they’re a cult hit! Apparently I missed the cast running around the bar.

The second half wasn’t quite as strong as the first, but it did have a light twist and it was performed with enthusiasm.

Such a nice venue.

I really don't think this has a chance of transferring into the West End. Regardless of the efforts of the cast, it is just not a good musical. There are no likeable characters, even if this is considered as a black comedy, and no resolution. And, I say that as someone who normally enjoys these teen-oriented musicals.

I'm happy to be out of touch and proved wrong. But tonight, the only standing ovation was a few people at the back (and those who stood to see as they were behind them) and the conversations I heard when leaving were far from positive. It will sell in Hammersmith with the current heavy discounts, but I can't see this coming close to covering the costs of running in a West End home.

Three school age teenagers want to get tickets to see “Harry” - a pop star they all fancy of ambiguous sexuality. Second half, the teen who didn’t get to go see Harry takes matters into their own hands. It all ends happily (somehow).

Give it a go. I'm in the interval right now, and I'm finding it very funny.

Some spoilers follow. . .

This is about the kind of fan "girls" who write a lot of fan fiction where they have relationships, and elaborate adventures, with popstars, and where they are the "wife" of said popstar.

This is raucous and it rings as if it's based in truth to me, but also it's got the sick sensibility of "Heathers" or "Diva," where you just know the protagonists will take the logic and 'authenticity" of their feelings WAY too far into unhinged territory.

I once queued up with a girl who'd seen a popstar 200 times, and befriended the popstar's Mum, and was heartbroken because the popstar was avoiding her, even while his mother was still coddling her. This struck me as mentally unhealthy, but it certainly lets me know that what is being raucously parodied onstage is a real thing.

There are some performers doing massively and magnificently (comically exaggerated) funny work here, with Terique Jarrett's Salty, the fanfiction master, hilarious; Miracle Chance as a "seizure-y" sidekick, a kind of spacey teen female Keanu Reeves, an absolute hoot, and Gracie McGonigal's maniacal Lily having me in stitches, and the best thing about McGonigal's thrilling and mellifluous singing skills is that she comically aggressively flaunts them in character. . .

Edited to include thoughts on the second half:

The second half is at war with itself. This undoubtedly wants to be a no holds barred, unashamedly sick John Waters irreverent comedy (and it's very good at being that, with a feminist edge) grabbing the unhinged and saying yes to it. But suddenly, there is a tonal shift where the show pretends to get angry about fangirls being patronised, even while depicting fangirls as wielding chainsaws and baseball bats. At this point, the show plaintively wails about the plight of women, and I feared it had flopped the landing, as you can't do IDGAF comedy if you're sincere.

Thankfully, the show course corrects just in time, as Mary Malone's Jules character brings back the outrageous comic psychopathy (think Regina George channeling JD from "Heathers") that embodies the plot and comic trajectory, and the show does in fact stick the landing.

But that tonal wobble, the attempt to have its cake and eat it, definitely weakened the show.

Fortunately, there are a couple of elements in the second half that are absolutely brilliant:-

(1) The best is when the Harry (not Styles lol) character, Thomas Grant magnificently vacuous in floppy white astronaut trousers, and his "One Direction" parody band, perform a set that is so authentically cynical ("Nobody Loves You Like Me", Our Generation will save the world, etc) that I bust up laughing as Debbie Kurrup's character's parental assertion that the band is just the creation of "middle aged men" was proved unassailably true in the sheer mindwarping manipulation of it! So funny!

(2) The other great second half moment involved genuine poignancy as the biggest fangirls sing of how "Disgusting" they are. In this moment, all the horrific expectations heaped on teen girls in the social media age were heartbreakingly dissected.

As Edna, the lead character fangirl, Jasmine Elcock nails both her vocals and the character's most bonkers moments, and she even makes a case for forgiving the tonal mishaps (though I don't forgive them).

All in all though, this show works best as John Waters does Heathers to the tune of 4 delightful stars from me.

A "Creatives Team" Ovation?

I'm going to write a more detailed review tomorrow but I'm in agreement, Fangirls is batsh*t insane and I had such a blast watching it.

I enjoyed this, I went with a friend who I met in my youth when we were both fangirls of the same person and this brought back a lot of shared memories and feelings! I think it's conflicted, it feels like it is both trying to challenge the view of fangirls as crazy, screaming and unbalanced and reinforcing that view. It also has quite a narrow view of fandom, that it's all about being in love with someone, when that is quite a specific type of fandom/fangirl. I would have preferred to see more about how being a fan can create friendships and community and less about the extreme antics that take place in the second half of the show, but all the same it was great to see a show about this subject and if it had been around when I was a little 14 year old fangirl I'm sure I would have been obsessed with it!