The reviews are in for Girls, Theresa Ikoko’s award-winning first play, revived by JMK Award winner Ewa Dina in the Maria at the Young Vic, where it runs until 21 November. Set in Nigeria in 2014, the year Boko Haram took 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, it follows three teenage friends held in a militants’ camp. The critics are at one about the company: Hannah Akhalu, Sewa Zamba and Tara Tijani are praised almost everywhere, Tijani most often by name. Where they part company is on the evening around them. The Guardian, Time Out and Theatre Weekly find the mix of schoolgirl comedy and terror devastating; WhatsOnStage, LondonTheatre.co.uk and LondonTheatre1 think the near two-hour, interval-free evening is longer than its story needs, First Night Magazine finds the comedy misplaced, and the Guardian and All That Dazzles both think the bursts of sound and light are overdone.
3.6 / 5 from 11 criticsThe verdict: eleven reviews in, every one of them rated: seven four-star notices and four at three stars, for an average of 3.6 out of 5. Nobody goes lower than three, and nobody higher than four. The warmth is for the three performers, Hannah Akhalu, Sewa Zamba and Tara Tijani; the reservations are about length and stagecraft, not about whether the story deserves telling.
What are critics saying about Girls?
The Guardian
“A story of friendship amidst extreme misogynist violence”
Reviewer: Arifa Akbar
Akbar calls it a fierce and tender play, and values how distinctly each of the three girls is drawn and how spiky and loyal their friendship stays. Her complaints are practical ones: too many thunderclaps of stage effects, some short and confusing scene changes, and a closing sequence of faces on the screens that arrives without explanation.
“… this play … is without doubt a gut-punch: imaginative, tender, shocking.”
Time Out
“Funny, frightening and very hard to shake off”
Reviewer: Roisin Teeling
Teeling admires how the girls’ play-acting keeps Ikoko’s points about hashtag campaigns light without letting the audience forget what is real. She singles out Raphaé Memon’s costumes, which strip the red away from two of the three, and while she finds the wall of old televisions occasionally distracting, she thinks it earns its place by the devastating final scenes.
“You’re laughing one minute and holding your breath the next.”
West End Best Friend
“Theresa Ikoko’s powerful story of friendship under fire”
Reviewer: Stephanie Osztreicher
Osztreicher finds all three performances deeply felt and credits Dina’s direction, the movement by dkfash, and the sound and lighting of Munotida Chinyanga and Elliot Griggs. She does raise a larger question, about whether some of what the real girls endured might land harder through metaphor than through literal depiction, but is clear that it is not a dismissal of the production.
“The play’s power lies in the joy that exists alongside the horror.”
Read Stephanie Osztreicher’s full review at West End Best Friend
Theatre Weekly
“Three outstanding performances bring humour, humanity and heartbreak to this searing drama”
Reviewer: Matthew Plampton
Plampton picks out Tijani for comedy that keeps cutting through the tragedy, and calls Dina’s staging taut and assured. He reads the play as a sharp attack on Western indifference and performative solidarity, and his one reservation is that the script sometimes returns to ground it has already covered.
“Long after the hashtags have faded, it insists that we keep looking.”
LondonTheatre1
“Not for the fainthearted, and forthright and heartfelt in equal measure”
Reviewer: Chris Omaweng
Omaweng, who saw an earlier production in 2016, notes that the running time has grown from ninety minutes to a hundred and ten and thinks the show would gain from being cut back and quickened. He reads Tisana’s refusal to pray as a moral dilemma more than a religious one, and appreciates the venue keeping the auditorium open afterwards for anyone who needs a moment.
“There were some amusing moments, and much for the younger generations in particular to think about …”
All That Dazzles
“A powerful, heartbreaking and unexpectedly funny take on friendship and survival”
Reviewer: Seth Wilby
Wilby rates Ikoko’s writing as the production’s greatest strength, with humour that makes the girls more believable rather than undercutting them. He thinks the final stretch loses some momentum and that the repeated blasts of sound and light become slightly excessive, but praises all three performances and the oppressive world built by the set, video and sound.
“Uncomfortable, heartbreaking, and surprisingly funny, Girls is an important production that deserves to be seen and remembered.”
WhatsOnStage
“There are moments of brilliance throughout”
Reviewer: Miriam Sallon
Sallon credits Ikoko with giving each girl an identity beyond the tragedy, and finds the onstage audience seating a powerful device. She calls the design a mixed bag, with screens that look like a screensaver until the final images, and concludes that as a script there simply is not enough plot to fill two hours without a break.
“Akhalu, Zamba and Tijani have a comfortable chemistry, bantering at bullet speed …”
LondonTheatre.co.uk
“Amid the horrors of this powerful play is a paean to female friendship”
Reviewer: Anya Ryan
Ryan admires the way the production lets the outside world in, from the news footage on the screens to Chinyanga’s mosquito-laden soundscape and the jolting blackouts. She finds the cast a joy when the girls are allowed to be children, but feels the play turns repetitive across a running time of just under two hours.
“… the power of female friendship shines through even in the worst of circumstances.”
London Box Office
“A surprisingly light and in places even joyous touch”
Reviewer: Stuart King
King finds all three performances charming and engaging, and picks out Tijani’s clarity and comic timing as Haleema for making the young women entirely relatable despite the danger they face. He doubts the production will set awards season alight, but values its seriousness of purpose.
“… there is rock solid and meaningful work here, underpinned by an earnestness to keep alive the #BringBackOurGirls movement …”
First Night Magazine
“Kidnapping play doesn’t fully steal audiences’ hearts”
Reviewer: Guillermo Nazara
Nazara is the coolest of the eleven. He thinks the three characters never grow beyond their opening traits, and that the comic sequences sit awkwardly beside the harrowing ones and weaken the cumulative impact. The performances he calls remarkably good, with Tijani earning his highest praise.
“It’s a subject worth discussing. The show, maybe not so much.”
Also reviewed by: The Stage (Sam Marlowe, four stars, “Terrifyingly vivid”), whose review sits behind a registration wall.
Production photographs by Helen Murray.
For more on the production, read our guide to everything you need to know about Girls and our gallery of the first production photos. Earlier this autumn the Young Vic also opened Thelma & Louise; here is what the critics made of it.
