REVIEW: Girls, Soho Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

Girls

Soho Theatre

29 September 2016

5 stars

Book Tickets

Meet Halle, Ru and T - three school girls kidnapped from their village and taken, with numerous unseen others, into captivity. Their village is never named, the year never specified, yet the similarities with the 2014 Boko Haram girls are too strong to ignore. All three are desperate to get home, with naïve Tisana dreaming of a hero’s welcome and cynical Haleema crafting a shiv under the cover of darkness. Meanwhile, Ruhab, the final part of the triumvirate, does whatever she must to survive.

Between, this however, they bicker, make dirty jokes, talk about boys, sing, dance, play – in short, act like the teenage girls they are. These bursts of joy punctuate the uncertain monotony of their imprisonment. They talk about Beyoncé and Rihanna, poke fun at their friends and family and lament missing out on watching Big Brother. These cultural references serve as markers of a time and place, and the audience is abruptly reminded that this is happening right now, in our world of Kardashians and Twitter feeds and repeats of Family Guy. The titular girls should have been normal youngsters, with normal problems, not fighting for their lives in a terrorist hostage camp. In another life, writer Theresa Ikoko’s characters could have been ordinary teenagers, and this is what makes Girls so extraordinary, and so unsettlingly close to home.

Ikoko’s gripping 90-minute play doesn’t waste a second as it hurtles towards its inevitable, heartbreaking conclusion. The result is unapologetically devastating, and will stick with you long after leaving the theatre. But Girls is also funny, unexpectedly, fiercely, defiantly funny, as the trio speaks to each other with the lovely unfiltered frankness that comes with a close friendship.

The three-woman cast is astoundingly talented. They ricochet off of each other with an affectingly realistic girlish energy, swerving between emotions and moods as swiftly as any teen. Anita-Joy Uwajeh as Haleema is an excellent foil, tomboyish to the others domestic femininity, yet achingly loyal and protective. She and Abiola Ogunbiyi (Tisana) are terrific when they play-act as other people, creating an escapist world where they are celebrated and successful, but most of all, safe. Yvette Boakye’s Ruhab is a subtle, yet entrancing performance.

The lighting, designed by Andy Purves is truly masterful, playing with sudden darkness and flickering light to suggest a lingering panic, an omnipresent sense of danger always in the background. Rosanna Vize’s sloping, claustrophobic set serves as both a forest and a village hut, its surreal pink and purple hues a mockery of a girly bedroom. It cleaves the performance space into a narrow sliver of a stage, forcing the audience right up against the action, forcing them to look, and acknowledge that this is indeed happening.

A stark reminder that the Boko Haram girls, as well as countless others, are still not home, Girls is confrontational without becoming prosecutorial, heartfelt without becoming unbelievable. With powerful writing and equally strong performances, Girls is a must see production this autumn.

Until October 29

BOOK TICKETS FOR THE GIRLS AT SOHO THEATRE