Trolley Girls

Aug 25

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Laughing Horse @ The Pear Tree
Aug 25-27 (13:30)

Script: four-stars.png Stagecraft: three-stars.png Performance: four-stars.png

There is wee gorgeous corner of Lancashire, a few miles east of Burnley, called Colne, which appears to the advancing walker rather like some Tuscan hill-town. This small town of 10,00 souls is little boutique, Tunbridge-Wellsian world with three theaters, cool coffee-shops & the annual, internationally renowned rhythm & blues festival. Its most famous son is Wallace Hartley, the guy who kept playing the violin to the very end as the Titanic sunk around him. Also from Colne was the grandmother of John Keats – Alice Whalley Jennings – who brought our young poet up on a diet of Lancashire hot-pot. In the twenty-first century the town is now in the early stages of producing two very talented young, blond-haired starlets;  Jessica Forrest and Olivia Nicholson. Their company is called Sugar Butties & for the second year in a row they are bringing their Trolley Girls to the Fringe.

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IMG_20170825_134949740.jpgContent-tweaked & played out in a bigger room, there is something so low-brow & brilliant about a play in which a lassie from Burnley Asda gets a move to the Manchester Asda, & the huge emotional scimitar that drops between a friendship. That the girls are pals in real life is clear, for they bring an emotional intensity to their multiple roles, which makes it all incredibly believable, as do the well painted inanities & mundanities of modern small town life. The chat is also smashing; frank, down-to-earth, unafraid of stark sexual honesty & rippling with the sweetest version of the Lanky Twang. ‘You’ve got nice ass & that, but I just don’t love you‘ says one of the main character’s boyfriends ater going off with a girl from the Morrison’s kiosk, which pretty much sums up the world in which they live in, where Manchester is ‘weelllll far away!’ despite being less than an hour on the X43 from Burnley bus station.

Watching Trolley Girls is like watching Sugar Butties blow bubbles, with each one rising, growing bigger then popping; we have music, we have sitcom, & we have a wonderful scene where one of the girls leaves a hilarious & poetic answer message to her boyfriend, declaring she was showing her psycho side. Finally, they finish with a flourish of impersonations of the different folk who work on the Asda counters, & some showbiz singing to leave us all proper buzzin’ like! There’s nowt quite like Trolley Girls, swear down, so check it out while you can.

Reviewer : Damo

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Posted on August 25, 2017, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.

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