Drama Girls Review

Drama Girls Review

3rd & 4th February 2025

The luvvies loved it. The wannabe theatricals whooped their approval. There was sympathetic applause too from disappointed drama queens and princes yet to break into acting rather than serving coffees and burgers.

Drama Girls was a drama that promised rather more than it delivered. The premise was sound: a peek into the outrageously elite world of drama training, where talent is polished, egos are inflated and bank accounts are drained.

So far so good for a play written by Tilly Woof and heading from two nights at the Union Theatre, Southwark, London, for the Edinburgh Fringe later this year.

“There are plenty of laughs in this hour-long exploration of the drama game”

Tilly also performs as Lisa, one of the three women chasing their dreams in a world that offers everything but guarantees nothing. She is joined by Claudia Sears, who plays Dani, and Zahra Jassi, in the role of Jen.

It will be a return visit to Edinburgh for Jassi, who appeared there in Dahling, You were Marvellous. That faint praise is music to the ears of many a thesp, even when hollow and undeserved

Is the agony of drama training ever going to be worth the effort? The tantrums and tears, the insecurities and naked ambition, the ruthless competition, neuroses and self-absorption?

There are plenty of laughs in this hour-long exploration of the drama game as we follow Lisa, Dani and Jen in their efforts to tap dance, perfect ballet moves and mime, channel animal behaviour and think themselves into the part of a melting ice cream or a blade of grass wafting in the wind.

Petty jealousies bubble to surface as Lisa and Jen envy the riches of Dani who, they suspect, has only won her place in drama school because her granny once babysat Laurence Olivier’s dog.

They are all obsessed with their diets, which includes cigarettes, white wine, shots and occasional use of an inhaler. Is it true, they muse, that you can’t be a real actor unless you have done every single drug?

Horribly hungover after a night out clubbing the trio, hiding behind their dark glasses, endure the horror of a tech rehearsal under blinding spotlights and endless cues. Voice actors Dawn Ingleson, who takes the role of director Louise, and Alan Power as Kyle the Techie, only add to their pain.

It is Dani’s pain that seem the most acute as panic attacks. ‘I don’t care. I am tired. I don’t want this,’ she wails. ‘I want to enjoy my life and not feel this constant terror.

‘If I don’t crap on stage it will be a miracle.’

Dani, Lisa and Jen invite you to laugh, cry and cheer for them but you’d be forgiven for feeling a little smug knowing you didn’t blow a fortune on a career with as much security as a paper umbrella in a hurricane.

Drama Girls may appeal to the drama In Crowd but before Edinburgh the production needs to be sharper and more polished to make a hit with audiences not involved in this crazy industry.

Gill Martin

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