Fangirls musical review – an extraordinary, heartfelt show that also embraces the ridiculous

Mega-boyband Heartbreak Nation are finally performing in Sydney, and 14-year-old Edna doesn’t have a ticket – but that’s okay. She knows lead singer Harry better than anyone else in the world, and she has a plan.

With her debut musical Fangirls, Yve Blake has managed something extraordinary, and has created a show that’s silly and irreverent – but that never lets the feelings and lives of the titular fangirls themselves be the butt of the joke.

Edna (played by the magnetic Jasmine Elcock) is a scholarship kid at an all-girls private school in her day-to-day, and also a superfan of Harry and Heartbreak Nation, who she writes popular fanfiction about. We follow her as she tries to strike a balance between these worlds, and between the life that she wants to lead and imagines for herself – adventures, falling in love, being taken seriously – and the life that she’s got (a “sh*t flat”, not enough money, and now, she’s fallen out with her best friends). Something has to give, and Blake is not afraid to push what that something is to the absolute limit.

Paige Rattray’s production is never at less than 110 per cent, in both its earnestness and its ridiculousness. Edna’s life is expanded into a pop concert, with the beautiful, epic screens making up David Fleischer’s production design placing us right in the stadium. Ebony Williams’ choreography is particularly impressive too, energetic and fun, and always adding to rather than distracting from the story. The hype and energy that this tone creates allows it to get away with a plot wilder than fanfiction but also ensures that the production matches the technicolour feeling of teenage girlhood. Ash J Woodward’s video design and Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting are really evocative here too, capturing the dreamscapes of the internet; the intensity of a sugar high crush; and the grown-up-Matilda-rebellion of a fangirls’ vigil.

Alongside this, Rattray’s direction itself is impeccable, moving us between humour and the deadly serious on a knife edge. All of the songs are really strong, but the particular standout is “Disgusting”, in which Edna and her two best friends, Brianna (a sweet Miracle Chance) and Jules (the always excellent Mary Malone), sing about how much they wish they looked different. It’s heartbreaking, for anyone who has been or known a teenage girl, but also hilarious, to hear the words “minging” and “butthole” in a ballad.

As well as the teenagers, Debbie Kurup makes an impressive Caroline, Edna’s mum. She starts off trying to show her daughter how manufactured boybands are, and how the marketing behind them takes advantage of teenagers like Edna but, over the course of the show, comes to recognise the significance of the teenage fans’ love for the bands. And it’s here that the musical lands, not dismissing this love – although it does suggest that the fans’ version of boyband members might be slightly more interesting than the men themselves – but instead celebrating it, and the way that it brings fangirls together.