Theatre review: Scenes with Girls
As the old saying ‘boys will be boys’ is becoming less and less cute in a post #metoo world, Scenes with Girls switches up the gendered expectations, casting a concerning eye on female friendship.
Twenty-something-year-old Lou’s been busy. She’s up to 23 guys now – 24 depending on your definition of sex – and numbers do matter. Her housemate Tosh has nothing to contribute on the topic, except for gut laughter and words of encouragement. Lou’s stories are crude, and her legs are spread so wide it seems we’re meant to compare the scene to the ones where blokes are boasting of their conquests, and where women, if they could be flies on the wall, would call them out and tell them off, and still the boys would high five each other. But this is Scenes with Girls, and despite the provocative gender-flipping banter between Lou and Tash, there’s clearly a serious feminine chemistry at play.
Lou and Tosh are in love with one another, but only in a platonic way. They’re female besties, who laze around in each other’s arms and assure one another that they’re hilarious and brilliant and the absolute best, and this is possibly the most important relationship they’ll ever have. Until, that is, they fall prey to romantic love. For the moment, though, that’s not going to happen. They’re “deprograming themselves from the typical narrative,” they tell Fran, Lou’s old friend who visits to show them her engagement ring, and it’s hard not to want to finish the sentence for them with ‘blah blah blah’. It’d be so great if Fran told them to grow up and slammed the door to their flat on her way out, but her role is to be “basic” (the horror!), offsetting the other two as extraordinarily special, because that’s exactly what they think they are.
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Told in multiple vignettes, the relationship between Lou and Tosh shift from exclusive to obsessive to toxic. “It wasn’t a story,” one tells the other, “it was a given,” and though this is a particularly millennial show – there are mentions of The Veronicas and Sally Rooney’s Normal People, and the two can’t keep their hands off their devices – those words seem to make it timeless. How often do young women, who’ve linked themselves full-heartedly with their best friend, continue that friendship into old age? What once seemed as strong as romantic love, or even stronger than romantic love could ever prove to be, turns out to be something that merely filled the space between adolescence and adulthood. It’s sort of tragic. And, as this show proves to be, comic.
Originally premiering at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2020, Scenes with Girls, by the playwright Miriam Battye, is taken on by actor-turned-director Ashton Malcolm, and is produced by Deus Ex Femina, an indie company founded by actor, poet and producer Katherine Sortini, who recently won the Frank Ford Memorial Young Achiever Award at the Ruby Awards. It’s a small cast, with Caithlin O’Loghlen as Lou, Brittany Gallasch as Tosh and Zola Allen as Fran, but they pack an enormous punch – particularly O’Loghlen, whose energy is bold and infectious.
Although, in the end, I was left craving occasional subtlety somewhere in the production: even the set was painted brightly, and the lights, too, were bright, as was the entire vibe, begging the question: are the pivotal relationships formed between young women given the gravitas they deserve? According to last night’s laughter in all the right places, it’s pretty good fodder for spoof.
Scenes with Girls is playing at Goodwood Theatre’s Studio Space until December 13, presented by Deus Ex Femina as part of State Theatre Company’s Stateside program