If you’re reading this with bills to pay, loans on your mind and kids to worry about, you’ll probably agree with me when I say: being an adult is hard. However, after spending an evening watching the talented young ladies in Masquerade’s Girls Like That, I might be inclined to think that being a teenager was just a little bit harder.
The sharp, disjointed writing of Evan Placey’s play brought on several flashbacks to a time when my mind was occupied by boys instead of bank drafts, and popular opinion was the law of the land.
After taking a trip down memory lane guided by director Polly March… I’m not sure I’d ever want to go back. Teenagers in today’s social media and smartphone-based world seem to have it harder than ever, and the new face of young adulthood is picked apart by this production.
The 17 young ladies that make up the cast of this play were extremely effective, as the story progressed through snippets of their lives from kindergarten through to adulthood. The strength in this pro-duction lies squarely in the fact that the whole cast works so well together (unlike teenage girls generally seem to).
In a community of scene-stealers and up-stagers, it is a wonderful thing indeed to see a group gel as well as this one did, with each actress feeding off the energy of the cast mates around her.
The new face of young adulthood is picked apart by this production
With a group dynamic this strong, every performance in the group scenes was made stronger, sharper, heightened by the excellent team work and trust which is so often missing in many ensemble performances.
In fact, the scenes performed as a group were so strong and well-paced, that the interspersed monologues struggled a little to find their own speed. While energy was flying high and bouncing off the walls, it came to a sudden halt each time the scene changed to one of the monologues. Using the device of a dance break to allow the monologist time for a quick change felt out of place in this otherwise sharp production.
At that point I had to ask myself: is a pair of aviator goggles really more important than pace?
However, the young actresses delivering their monologues (Giulia Elena Xuereb, Kelly Peplow, Maria Cassar and Becky Camilleri) all gave good performances. Without the support offered by the group, it was here that personal talents began to shine through and some were able to recover the lost pace more solidly than others.
More than anything, this is a skill an actor picks up with experience, and I look forward to seeing more from all of these girls in the future. Finally, the teenage underdog inside me wanted to stand up andcheerat Analise Cassar’s impassioned take-down of backstabbing teen life, which served as a strong climax to the play.
At last, I must commend Polly March and Masquerade on their choice of this strong, female-driven play. Anyone who has watched the theatre scene in Malta grow and change over the last few decades will have noticed that we have no shortage of talented young women. Yet, play after play appears on our stages with minimal roles for women, and even fewer for budding talent.
To see 17 gifted young women working together is nothing less than a joy to behold. Well done, ladies, I’ll be looking for you in future productions.