Girlz
There has been something of a glut of post-SIX girl-group musicals at this year's Fringe, and Girlz certainly arrives with all the ingredients you'd expect: pop music, choreography, big personalities and a story about women navigating the darker side of the music industry. Unfortunately, while the production is polished and the cast are consistently good, I found the writing and music frustratingly familiar, and rarely as engaging as the concept suggests.
There is clearly a decent amount of money and effort behind the production, with video screens, more elaborate staging than you often see at the Fringe and some slick set pieces. The cast are also excellent, with Tamara Tare particularly impressive as Alex, singing the hell out of two songs that, to my ears, didn't give her nearly enough material to work with. There are a handful of genuinely enjoyable pop numbers, but much of the score felt closer to fairly conventional musical-theatre fare than the punchy, hook-heavy pop the show's premise seems to promise.
More fundamentally, I struggled with the show's attitude towards the very genre it is selling. Girlz trades heavily on the audience's affection for pop and girl groups, with obvious nods towards the likes of the Spice Girls, Girls Aloud and Little Mix, yet seems to regard much of that music with a degree of disdain. A sarcastic number about bringing back 'fun', for example, treats the very idea of uncomplicated pop entertainment as something almost embarrassing. There's nothing wrong with eviscerating the vapidity of the pop machine if that's what the writers want to do, and there is certainly plenty of mileage in examining the manufactured nature of pop stardom, but Girlz seems caught between wanting to celebrate pop and wanting to sneer at it, and never quite commits convincingly to either.
That contradiction becomes particularly noticeable in its treatment of authenticity. For a show ostensibly concerned with misogyny and the struggles women face in the music industry, a surprising amount of attention is given to the 'authentic' male musician boyfriend, whose guitar-playing credibility is repeatedly contrasted with the manufactured world of the girl group. It's an odd choice in a show that otherwise wants to interrogate exactly why women's music is so often treated as less serious or legitimate.
The marketing makes this tension even more apparent. The production is sold very much on the appeal of pop music and girl-group nostalgia, even encouraging filming and social-media sharing during the pop numbers. I can almost admire the Trojan horse approach: use the promise of glittery pop to get an audience in, then challenge them with something darker. But for that to work, there needs to be something more substantial waiting inside. Instead, the show's turn towards its more serious themes felt to me less like a clever subversion than an oddly cynical bait and switch.
The key story elements are so well-worn that I couldn't help wondering what Girlz was bringing to the table. In fact, its basic trajectory reminded me strongly of Spice World, a film that pokes fun at many of the same issues surrounding the music industry and manufactured girl groups, but does so with humour, spirit and, crucially, a genuine affection for the music and the women making it. Girlz has plenty to say about misogyny, exploitation, addiction and the pressures placed on women in the industry, but its emotional beats felt too familiar and too obviously signposted to make much of an impact.
That's not to say there isn't plenty to enjoy. The cast throw themselves wholeheartedly into the material, the production looks good and there are enough strong musical moments to show what this could potentially become. The audience around me seemed somewhat underwhelmed, although it seems to have received a generally positive response elsewhere.
Girlz clearly has ambition, and there is a solid production underneath it. For me, though, it never quite finds the personality to match its concept, landing awkwardly between a celebration and a critique of pop music without having enough affection for the former or bite for the latter.
★★★
