Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Little Deaths
Nuthatch Productions and Scissor Kick
Genre: New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
It’s the late 1990s and best friends Charlie and Debs are Spice Girl megafans, just starting out at secondary school and each other’s everything. Little Deaths charts the next 25 years of their life as they navigate school, family, health and relationships. Are the ties that bound them strong enough to keep them together? Billed as a romcom of platonic love Little Deaths sets out to explore the impact of the slings and arrows of life on a childhood friendship.
Review
We first meet Charlie (Olivia Forrest) and Debs (Rosa Robson) in 1998, already firm friends bonded over an adoration of the Spice Girls (they have a Wannabe dance routine) but now facing the first crisis – Gerry has left the group! This prompts their first disagreement, a little death in the relationship, and although from an adult perspective the minor fall out is both sweet and silly it sets the audience up for greater divides to come. We career through the next quarter century to 2023, dropping in every couple of years on party preparations, restaurant dates, awkward doorstep encounters and leave them in their mid-30s. It is, pleasingly, not a neatly tied up ending.
Starting with Amy Powell Yeate’s script for LIttle Deaths tightly directed by Claire O’Reilly, there is much to delight in. The witty banter, strong characterisation from Forrest and Robson, movement direction (Jennifer Fletcher) which filled each time hop with a suggestion of change. A performance space (designer Cara Evans) that resembles the bier for a coffin, a silver dias decorated with funeral flowers but also a stage for each snapshot of their lives, and practically an elevated performance arena which allowed for a lot of lounging on the floor without compromising audience sightlines. The actors never left the performance space and with minimal changes to costume and hair deftly indicated the impact of the passage of time on their appearance; they nailed the transition from child to adulthood. In a neat nod to Deb’s messy teenage bedroom by the end of the show the theatre floor was littered with cast off props and bits of costume.
There are some hints at cultural contexts in the music soundtrack and that teenage Charlie can’t continue with a budding football career as the structure for progression in women’s football didn’t exist. Otherwise it seems as if a choice has been taken to ignore wider political contexts, which could have either cemented the adult relationship (#MeToo maybe) or further driven a wedge (how did you vote on Brexit?). For me the percentage of stage time discussing boys/men was disappointing and also the foregrounding of poorly functioning reproductive organs. What else impacts on young women’s lives? I wanted to know why Charlie didn’t pursue her childhood ambition to become a lawyer and what stopped the artistically talented Debs from realising her full potential – if the hints were in the text they were too subtle for me.
Hopefully LIttle Deaths will get a run beyond Edinburgh Fringe. You will enjoy spending time in Charlie and Deb’s company as the play is an invitation to mourn and celebrate a lovely relationship.
