Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Weathergirl
Francesca Moody Productions
Genre: Comedy, Drama, New Writing
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Stacey is an all-American weather girl, the blond hair, perfect teeth click bait for a local TV station’s morning show, spouting anodyne ‘its gonna be hot’ forecasts in between the cooking slot and the weird cat story of the day. But California is burning and Stacey fears she is the only one who can see the apocalypse coming. In between shallow dates and agonising over her homeless mum is she really the only person who can save the world? Brought to you by Francesca Moody productions this is a bitterly funny, slick and startling wake up call for our times.
Review
This has been a sell-out show at Edinburgh Fringe largely from canny PR reminding us that it is produced by the team who nurtured the blockbuster Fleabag and 2024’s controversial but lauded Baby Reindeer. One might be wary about the hype but Weathergirl is worth all the pre-festival fuss. It is an outstanding show – great acting, eloquent staging (Director Tyne Rafaeli), a pin sharp sound design (Kieran Lucas ) all adding dramatic energy to an already fizzing script by American playwright Brian Watkins.
Californian actor Julia McDermott is pitch perfect as the eponymous weather girl, Stacey, on first appearance a ‘fame at all costs’ bottle blond using her weather girl stint as a stepping stone to a greater platform than her local TV green screen gives her. From the off she is a wise-cracker, reminiscent of a Kathryn Hepburn or Doris Day (if Calamity Jane wore spanx and was macro-dosing on prosecco from her innocent looking water cup). She is surrounded by a cast of unlikeable characters – a misogynistic cameraman, Jerry the TV news editor not keen on reporting the facts, Mark (Stacey can’t remember his actual name) a boring date – but she is an astute protagonist who cares deeply that wildfires are a portent of much worse to come.
Stacey is an unreliable narrator and when the tone turns more David Lynch than Harlan Coben we are pitched into a world of increasingly bizarre events as her employer’s seeming indifference to the dangers posed by crazy temperatures and a lack of rain sends Stacey off on a self-destructive spree. Although Stacey is the most unholy of saviours, we are asked to consider that she might have inherited mystical powers after being tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Her stories may be wild and fantastical but she does speak a bigger truth – we have to take individual and collective responsibility to tackle climate change together.
Watkin’s script is packed with deft character sketches beautifully realised by McDermott, along with her perfect comic timing. Although the performance space is small she is always amplified by one of several microphones – her TV body mic of course but also standing mics set at different heights which she has to stretch up to use, increasing her vulnerability and reminding us that our news is filtered, we don’t get the raw facts. And what Stacey gets off on is performance; she needs her audience to hear. Stacey’s troubling mother, whose actions of abandonment haunt her, is simply but magically brought to life through shadows cast on the back wall.
The only minor fly in the ointment of this otherwise outstanding production is Watkin’s choice to underline the key message of his text by having Stacey spell it out at the end that we are sleepwalking into a climate change emergency. We don’t need to be told given that we have just been so elegantly shown. Here’s hoping Weathergirl gets a transfer and a tour; it’s sold out in Edinburgh but this is a production which audiences well beyond the Fringe deserve to see.
