Tramway
Glasgow
April 9-13, 2019

Script:   Stagecraft:   Performance:     

Walking in to the Tramway theatre is always a pleasure with its vast walls and ceilings, and a warm welcome. Smoke swirled around as we took our seats in the auditorium and the set was intriguingly set up to look like a rock concert. And sure enough, when Cora Bisset took to the stage, the story of her rise to fame began to emerge. What Girls Are Made Of is a play written by Cora herself from her own teenage diaries, and reprised here at the Tramway from last year’s smash hit premier at the Edinburgh Fringe.

As the other band members take to the stage, Cora, standing with arms folded at the front of the stage, tells us dreamily “I wanted to sing in a band”. It was all she ever wanted and she had the voice and persona to do it. They were lucky, success came quickly and the band found themselves signing a five-figure record deal and touring with the likes of Radiohead and Blur when they were still only naïve teenagers from Fife, a fact which she never forgot, despite the intoxicants and partying which inevitably goes with this kind of fame.

Cora shares with us her memories of this time in the early nineties, with herself and the band frequently breaking into song and entertaining us with full blown performances of their own music and songs from the likes of Nirvana and Blur; giving us a taste of the rollercoaster rock star lives they were living. As Cora’s memories unfold, the band members take the part of the various characters, throwing themselves into the roles with gusto, before coming together once again to perform yet another blockbuster.

With the wheels turning at a greater and greater pace, the rest of the world just fell away and we became more and more absorbed, and at times concerned, about the actress/ singer/ writer as she and her band navigated their way through their new found success and all the successes to follow. But their wicked manager was writing too many cheques and all too soon they were broke, with a hefty dept that there was no way of paying. The bubble had burst and what had seemed to be a rosy future gradually fell to the wayside and wound up as though it had never happened at all. With zero money and a large dept, Cora takes us into a darker side of her life where she loses her father to dementia and as she recalls laying him to rest, she lowers her head and weeps.

This play entertains and enthrals you on so many levels, spanning rock music, singing, poetry, tragedy, beauty, gritty reality. Like the story itself it surrounds you, pulls you in and spits you out.  25 years after the event, Cora is in her forties and presents herself self-reflectively to the audience with sincerity, abundance and joy. She is someone who could – and for a short time did – have made it, not because of the business but because she had the voice, style, and sheer heart. As we can witness for ourselves in this masterpiece of entertainment.

Daniel Donnolly