FringeReview UK 2025
Darkie Armo Girl
Producers Saskia Freeman and Jaemin Yu, Cyprus High Commission, Where’s Betty Productions and Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre
Genre: Autobiography, Biographical Drama, Contemporary, Dark Comedy, Feminist Theatre, Fringe Theatre, Historical, Mainstream Theatre, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre
Venue: Finborough Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
A thrilling show, it’s the one-person blaze to catch before Christmas.
Producers Saskia Freeman and Jaemin Yu, Cyprus High Commission, Where’s Betty Productions and Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.
Review
“And I guess I’m OK with that.” After 82 minutes it might be a surprise to hear Karine Bedrossian say it. Writer and performer of Darkie Armo Girl she’s directed by Anastasia Bunce at the Finborough till December 20. It marks a return there after its premiere in 2022; where it was nominated for several Offies. That’s an accolade from the Finborough, given the 25-year-rule normally limiting productions here: no play produced in London in the last quarter-century usually gets one until that time’s up.
Bedrossian can appear monumental; then elfin-like, a small child; or slink back to a comically awkward stripper along with the gallimaufry of voices she flickers through her story. She sashays with devastating lightness to her unexceptional but drastic birth in Richmond. This after her family fled from the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Did I say Bedrossian’s very funny too?
Bedrossian was born in 1976, so her trauma is indirect though none the less overpowering, informing much of what follows. As a programme note details this reaches back as Bedrossian relates her grandparents’ fleeing Armenia when Turkey enacted its final, largest genocide of 1.5 million people in 1915-17 (there had been others in 1894-96 and 1909: the total is nearer 2 million). A genocide not formally admitted by the UK, let alone Turkey. German allies witnessing this took note. Indeed Hitler commented in June 1939: “Of course it will work. Who today remembers the slaughter of the Armenians?”
Though narrated with deadpan humour and even slapstick on occasion, Bedrossian’s story of abuse, first carried out by one brother, informs the girl Bedrossian breaks into. Grow might be too bland a word. And that’s quite apart from speaking three languages by the age of two.
Though it seems heavy to invoke the psychosocial tropes of re-traumatising and internalised violence, this is what Bedrossian brings with wry humour, deadpan comedy and hapless admiration for the rocking follies of her earlier self. As for learning from mistakes, Bedrossian engages with her repeat-offences against herself.
Bedrossian’s attempts to bond are often thwarted by her family’s ties to Cyprus, where her brother emigrates and becomes a hero of the national football team. Fleeing abuse, Bedrossian moves into the musical industry and the often-unwelcome attentions of agents. She becomes a Telstar hit performer, reaching Number Five in the charts, before the company goes bust. Though starting late sexually, she makes up for it: after an initial sweet encounter. Bedrossian enumerates three of five unsuitable lovers – either commitment-phobic or psychotically controlling – like a debutante’s score-card from hell.
The first of these pushes Bedrossian to get diagnosed, as having Borderline Personality Disorder. Then she’s flown out to California to a sex-addiction bootcamp, deliciously realised with the huge paisley-dressed Marge. There’s pregnancies and brutal consequences. And there’s a tellingly unpleasant moment at the end of her singing career, when Bedrossian refuses the attentions of a sleazy producer (whose father’s so big she can’t name him). Failing to seduce her, he predicts she’ll become a stripper. Running a Flickr through her subsequent affairs indeed launches Bedrossian into stripping: where attitude makes up for initial clumsiness, and fleeing a controlling man thrusts her into social housing. That’s where the set comes in.
Designed by Mim Houghton the ordinary-looking 1970s suburban lounge behind with its wallpapered banality studded with small framed pictures, shows nothing more alarming than a standard lamp and sofa. That all changes in a thrilling last-moment reveal, as Bedrossian shows how her life can deconstruct the world to its own image. Lit subtly by Abraham Walkling-Lea, Alex Powell’s video design plays on it sparingly but tellingly: from a Cyprus shoreline to a nightclub.
Bedrossian’s truce with the world seems provisional, as she looks steadily out at the audience a couple of feet away. Though she doesn’t over-emphasise the transmission of trauma, the early moniker bestowed on her by some classmate labels the show’s title and quite a lot of Bedrossian’s life: othering, objectification, dropping into London like an alien; serrated laughter. Grief can be inherited, intersectional violence and complex legacies might not define you: but they sure as hell harden the shell. Still a thrilling show, it’s the one-person blaze to catch before Christmas.
Associate Designer Juliette Demoulin, Associate Lighting Designer/Show Relight Kevin Murphy, Sound designer andy Wright, Associate Sound Designer Flick Isaac-Chilton, Video Designer Alex Powell, Video Programmer Austin Yang, Assistant Directors Jennifer Jowett, Cecile Fray, Stage Manager Rosie Twigg,
Production Photography Becky Martin PR.
General Manager Tara Marricdale, Assistant General Managers Sophie Gill and Silvia Verzaro, Assistant Resident Director Jillian Feuerstein, Poster Art Photography Alex Powell, Marketing Grace Joy Howarth, Original Dramaturgy Melissa Dunce, Cover Art Designer, Jillian Feuerstein.
Producers Saskia Freeman and Jaemin Yu, Cyprus High Commission, Where’s Betty Productions and Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre. PR Becky Martin PR.
