Girlhood – Greenside @ Riddles Court

Over the course of a New Year’s Eve, this play portrays how three women confront their ideas and perceptions of motherhood and shows how their relationships with their mothers have defined most of their lives. 

With sharp use of dialogue, space and movement, three vignettes unfold on stage at the same time and we observe how an unrealistic obsession with a perfect future contrasts with an unplanned single pregnancy and a resistance to being pressurised into motherhood. 

Tiegan Byrne, a new playwright, has created a complex play here which touches upon manipulation and vulnerability, fear and expectation and raises that all-important question, why do we women feel the way we do?  Her answer is clear – we are the daughters of our mothers. 

Or is it that straightforward?  Aren’t there displays of manipulation here too?  And pressures brought to bear by society, by partners, by family?  This is a very subtle yet serious piece of work.  Funny too!  Purposely included is a comedy scene – a nod to that thing called Girl Power – harking back to the heady days of pre-teen dance classes, when one of the only things a girl had to worry about was whether she could get the moves right to the Spice Girls’ Tell Me What You Want. 

This play will most definitely make you laugh – the drunken party girl who bursts onstage to vomit into a waste paper bin plays a blinder – and it’ll really make you think, long after the curtain call, long after the bus home. 

The unexpected twist at the end is so illuminating, I swear I heard the audience whisper ‘a-ha!’ at the end, or maybe not.  Still, they most definitely had it in their heads.    

Reviewer: Susan Cohen

Reviewed: 5th August 2024

North West End UK Rating: