Edinburgh Fringe 2018
Girl World
Frisky
Genre: Devised, Fringe Theatre, Theatre
Venue: theSpace@Triplex
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Inga and Tilly are besties. Of an age where the world stops being about them and dollies and starts to open up, Tilly is the one who wants more, whilst Inga is the one who just wants to keep out boys. Between them they engage in child like horse play until Tilly convinces Inga to play through the hole.
Review
Filled with innuendo and crudeness this was never going to be subtle – we were well warned – but wrapping it up in the naivete of childhood could have been a masterstroke. It nearly manages that but there are a few areas where I felt it fell short and therefore damaged the concept.
Both performers are great to watch and convincing. Their material, at times, gets the balance between the young girl nature of their play and the crude awakening that will come right. But sometimes the crudeness delves into a point where, that point gets lost.
In a place where there is one rule – no boys allowed – this was never going to end well. The likelihood was that one of them would give in and drag the other with here to they would split up citing artistic differences. The problem is that we get exactly that – one gets dragged in by the other. I wanted it to be otherwise.
With that premise in place, the fuzzy felt set tells us of happier times, the made up names for things of happier interactions and the homage played to things that are incomprehensible all part of growing up. Ending up playing with the hole, slipping a finger in and the idea of being reborn into mother hood just crudely took us on a pathway that was late night silliness. To be fair many seemed at quarter to eleven on a Thursday night to be looking precisely for that.
The most annoying, for me, were the boys who were playing the music. One was all glitzy and ditzy playing a dumb blond with gusto – no wonder they were not allowed in… Except they were.
But I quite enjoyed it for all I might moan. There is a cleverness in the writing, the idea is a good one but between getting the initial idea and getting it onto a stage I just felt there was something missing. The technical craft – including the music – was very well done. The movement set pieces were very good and the direction hardly faltered.
If you want to pay homage to the great Goddess FATNABOONA, get on it but be prepared for the ceremony to not be quite what you might have expected.
