Post by Steve on Mar 2, 2024 18:20:13 GMT
Saw today's matinee and it's adorable.
This is a transfer from the Edinburgh festival.
It's a two hander about two 17 year old girls who think life might be passing them by, and who make up dramatic stories for fun.
The two performances are moment-to-moment fantastic, the characters really pop, and it's very funny.
Some spoilers follow. . .
There's a certain kind of will-they-won't-they love story that's fizzes with tension as long as they don't (I seem to remember that the "Moonlighting" TV show had it's audience on tenterhooks as long as they didn't, and when they went there, the steam drained out of it and it got cancelled).
Well, this is the best of all worlds, since the question of whether one or the other of these two teen girls like each other keeps the dramatic tension fizzing, and you know that it's going to end after an absolutely delightful 75 minutes straight through, whatever happens.
As the title suggests, it's period Western stories that these two like to cosplay, and since male-female roles are so defined in Westerns, this allows these two ordinary teens to suddenly break out the American accents and swagger and swoon all over the place. This play is a critique of male-female straitjackets, and more subversively, it is a loving cheeky camp celebration of such roles.
Of the two, Georgia Vyvyan's Noa is depicted as slightly more stereotypically feminine (fast-talking, dramatic, impulsive) whereas Julia Pilkington's Nina is slightly more stereotypically masculine (slow-speaking, taciturn, considered).
But when they play at Westerns, these tendencies are a thousand times more exaggerated, which is laugh-out-loud funny, as Vyvyan expertly storms around, batting her eyelids, cheeks trembling, side eyes popping, every bit the breathy Vivian Leigh at her most iconic; and still funnier, Pilkington slouches around in slow motion, inarticulately mumbling, staring off into distances. It's brilliantly comic.
Of course, plot wise, nothing much really happens, but given how short the running time, how expert the characterisation (the writer will obviously one day be hired as a staff writer on a Heartstopper or be a showrunner of such a show), how utterly true and hilarious the performances, this gets 4 and a half stars of a delighted thumbs up from me.
This is a transfer from the Edinburgh festival.
It's a two hander about two 17 year old girls who think life might be passing them by, and who make up dramatic stories for fun.
The two performances are moment-to-moment fantastic, the characters really pop, and it's very funny.
Some spoilers follow. . .
There's a certain kind of will-they-won't-they love story that's fizzes with tension as long as they don't (I seem to remember that the "Moonlighting" TV show had it's audience on tenterhooks as long as they didn't, and when they went there, the steam drained out of it and it got cancelled).
Well, this is the best of all worlds, since the question of whether one or the other of these two teen girls like each other keeps the dramatic tension fizzing, and you know that it's going to end after an absolutely delightful 75 minutes straight through, whatever happens.
As the title suggests, it's period Western stories that these two like to cosplay, and since male-female roles are so defined in Westerns, this allows these two ordinary teens to suddenly break out the American accents and swagger and swoon all over the place. This play is a critique of male-female straitjackets, and more subversively, it is a loving cheeky camp celebration of such roles.
Of the two, Georgia Vyvyan's Noa is depicted as slightly more stereotypically feminine (fast-talking, dramatic, impulsive) whereas Julia Pilkington's Nina is slightly more stereotypically masculine (slow-speaking, taciturn, considered).
But when they play at Westerns, these tendencies are a thousand times more exaggerated, which is laugh-out-loud funny, as Vyvyan expertly storms around, batting her eyelids, cheeks trembling, side eyes popping, every bit the breathy Vivian Leigh at her most iconic; and still funnier, Pilkington slouches around in slow motion, inarticulately mumbling, staring off into distances. It's brilliantly comic.
Of course, plot wise, nothing much really happens, but given how short the running time, how expert the characterisation (the writer will obviously one day be hired as a staff writer on a Heartstopper or be a showrunner of such a show), how utterly true and hilarious the performances, this gets 4 and a half stars of a delighted thumbs up from me.
