Hannah Morley’s debut play, We Could All Be Perfect depicted the dizzying experience that is teenage girlhood perfectly through its chaotic and kaleidoscopic storytelling across 47 episodic scenes in only an hour and a half. Between Barbie, The Eras Tour, Girl maths, GUTS, The Renaissance World Tour, Girl dinner, undeniably, 2023 is the year of the girl. And being a girl is great. But it’s scary. And maybe even perfect? This is what Morley’s work conveys perfectly; an ode to a teenage girl.
From fashion and fandoms to the future, to ancient Greek mythology to Greta Thunberg, and influencing, the play covers all bases without wearing the audience out. It does all of this while somehow maintaining a certain guttural, breathy rawness in its fierce characters. Whether it’s because you relate to their feral boyband obsessions, or recognise those soulmate connections you form in the girl’s bathroom, or see yourself in their youthful mischievousness, the characters are utterly enamouring.
Though none of the characters are named on stage and many of them only seen once throughout the play, the five member cast (made up of Anshula Bain, Heather Forster, Rosa Hesmondhalgh, Alice Walker and Jada-Li Warrican) do an incredible job of making you feel connected to each and every one of them. Both this transgression of time and knowing chuckles from the audience serve as evidence that being and becoming a girl is a universally incredible and deeply disarming experience that never leaves us. Because you’re always a teenage girl really.
Because being a teenage girl is making mistakes and cutting a really awful fringe and becoming deeply invested in the Kar-Jenners and wanting to scream at everything and feeling embarrassed and ashamed and like “an absence of space” and wearing pink jumpers and erupting at the wrong moment and telling your best friend about your first kiss and hating the idea of being perceived but longing to be desired.
Everything about this play was visceral and arresting and hilarious and terrifying. Especially in light of this week’s events with Laurence Fox, Russell Brand and rising global ‘incel’ culture, I left the theatre feeling seen. I felt heard. I felt like a girl.
Rating: ★★★★★
We Could All Be Perfect is playing at the Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse until October 14th. Tickets are available at https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/events/we-could-all-be-perfect
