STRAND REUPLOAD: When a Joyous Celebration of Fan Culture goes too far - Reviewing Fangirls at the Lyric Hammersmith

Ahead of the WhatsonStage awards 2024, I am taking a look back at the shows I have had the pleasure of reviewing across the year for myself and for 'The STRAND Magazine', starting with the one that started it all, Fangirls!

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The UK Debut of Fangirls is the fever dream of every young Wattpad, AO3, or Tumblr fanfiction writer of any genre.

From Internet friends, real life friends not understanding, to the stereotypical boyband that occupies an entire generation's wildest imaginations and a fanfic which turns psychotic.

​This celebration of the "unbridled passion of teenage girls" (the Lyric Hammersmith's own words) lives up to the chaos but for the promise? But in my point of view, I'm not so sure...

Our show races off with a bang – figuratively and literally – with the reveal of the set's amazing centre piece: three curved LED screens which display the solar system, arenas and stadiums, a choir of people (young actors from the BRIT School who piled into the auditorium for their professional London debuts) who represent the sea of fans' roaring their lungs out at a pop concert, and more. It then cleverly transitions to the bedroom of our protagonist Edna (Jasmine Elcock), with clothes falling from the rafters and straight onto the stage – I'm taking predictions now on how many times these clothes are going to hit Elcock in the face during this musical's run!

​Edna, we learn as we are introduced to her, is the writer of a classic Y/N story (a genre of fanfiction where readers insert themselves into the narrative, usually as a love interest to the main character whom fans have a celebrity crush on) involving Harry (Thomas Grant), the megastar lead singer of a boyband. It's the type of story that almost every fanfic writer has done and would probably be sent to prison for if they tried to enact these fictional fantasies in real life.

We soon get to know her friends Brianna (Miracle Chance) and Jules (Mary Malone) – these two are incredible performers and their dynamic is nothing short of relatable. This trio functions almost like a family with their quintessential relationship hiccups and emotional dynamics that find poor Brianna nearly always stuck in the middle of it all.

Originally an Australian stage production, Fangirls' music is electric. The new song added for this London debut, "Learning To Be Lonely", is one of my favourite songs, and I’m prepared for every budding soprano to be learning it as an audition track in the coming months. Later, when it is revealed that the band at the centre of Edna, Brianna, and Jules' fervent adoration is coming to their country, it is up to Jules to hilariously blackmail her mum to buy the tickets costing $139.95 each – a baffling sum revealed in extravagance and grandeur by the astounding riffs of Gracie McGonigal.

The search party number “Justice” is another anthem that earned a hugely positive audience reaction. Here, the ensemble grew to its pinnacle with Ebony Williams' impeccable choreography and Yve Blake's gloriously over-dramatic lyrics, proving there are more teenagers obsessed with fanfiction and boybands than we likely believed in our childhood days.

The pace of Fangirls is breathless. We gallop from one "new fanfic idea" to an amazingly catchy "best night of our lives" to a slightly strange time jump for the last minute of the first half. We don’t even have enough time to process and hope that the final seconds of Act 1 are just another fanfiction sequence before the auditorium lights brighten for the interval, leaving us with quite a few questions.​

In fact, the show doesn't even stop when the curtains are down. The pre-show playlist of One Direction, West Life, and JLS definitely gets us in the mood, and hardcore fangirls (aka. cast members) can be spotted walking around the Lyric Hammersmith during the interval if you take a wander around the theatre. In a strangely meta and full circle moment paralleling their characters' celebrity obsessions, these three interact with audience members (aka. the cast's own fans) and lead everyone into a Mexican wave from one side of the theatre to the other, chanting for the Fangirls universe's VIP boyband.

​The Act 2 I saw didn't feel like it belonged to the same show as the Act 1 from 20 minutes ago. It took the central plot device of an unhinged fanfiction to extremes, going down an unrealistic storyline that detracted from the joyous energy and pure passion of before. When I thought things couldn’t get darker, it did – over and over again, whilst still going deeper and deeper.

​Easing us out of the really dark section is the song "Disgusting", an anthem for anyone who grew up being bullied in school and had no acceptable outlet of reprieve – something I observed a lot of audience members connecting with, based on all the reactions across the auditorium. The beautiful harmonies from Chance, Elcock, and Malone shine through, just as they do throughout the musical as a whole.

Unfortunately, it didn't do enough to save the fanfiction part of the show from disappearing into the shadows of a psychological thriller, which at points wasn't the way I expected or wanted this upbeat show to be. The way it ended was additionally really sudden; a single scene is dedicated to wrapping events up before the musical launches into its finale, where everyone appears surprisingly unbothered and unscathed, joking about what happened as if it hadn't impacted their lives at all. Too many unanswered questions and too little closure.

Like the crazy Wattpad and AO3 stories we grew up with, Fangirls' dive into addictive fan culture and rabid boyband mania goes just a step too far.

Fangirls played at the Lyric Hammersmith until 24 August and is eligible for 5 awards at the WhatsonStage awards this year, but will they come on top? Only time will tell. If you missed the run of the show in the summer and want to explore more, the soundtrack from the original Aussie cast is available on all streaming platforms. But before you do, I encourages those who are impacted by themes of self-harm and mental health to seek more information about “the hashtag” used in this show before listening.​

All Photo Credits : Manuel Harlan