If you’re still healing from the break-up of One Direction eight years on from the boyband’s split, you’re in luck – though the boys aren’t reuniting for one last tour any time soon, brand new London opening Fangirls might just be the next best thing.
The musical, by Australian screenwriter Yve Blake, premiered in her home country in 2019 to rave reviews and scooped multiple prizes including a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Production of a Mainstage Musical. Now a refreshed, souped-up version with a brand new cast (though still with the same Aussie accents) is now coming to London for a run at Lyric Hammersmith Theatre.
When Blake and I speak, she and the cast are coming to the end of rehearsals: they have just finished running through a portion of the show which transforms the musical into a full blown pop concert. The new set features LED floor panels, and “production value beyond my wildest dreams”. Theatre choreographer Ebony Williams, who has collaborated with the likes of Rihanna and Beyonce, as well as choreographing Doja Cat’s world tour, is involved.
“Like what the f**k!” Blake exclaims. “I feel like the production that's coming together in London, which is a brand new production and totally reinvented… I just feel like all of these really smart people are making my dream show. As a writer, you're like a dad in a delivery room. There's nothing you can do. I just sit there and cry some happy tears. That's how I feel right now.”
Blake says that the initial inspiration for Fangirls stemmed from a real-life drama surrounding the boyband One Direction. In 2015, more or less out of the blue, Zayn Malik suddenly announced that he was leaving the group, and Directioners – to give fans of the band their official title – went into mourning. Following the news, the phrase ‘I’M CRYING’ was tweeted at a rate of between four and six times a second, and fans processing his departure was “a global news story,” Blake says.
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“I was fascinated because I noticed that journalists were reaching for the same words again and again to refer to a group of One Direction fans who they presumed to be largely teenage girls,” Blake says. “The words they were reaching for were adjectives like: crazy, psycho, hysterical, over the top, desperate, pathetic, and a bit much. I asked myself; would they reach for the same adjectives if they were covering an upset that had happened in men's sports?”
Though Fangirls takes some dark and surreal twists, with a number of satirical plot elements, it is – at its core – primarily a celebration of teenage fans, who are often belittled and underestimated. “They have such cultural and economic power, teenage girls. I think it's so ironic that people roll their eyes at them,” she says. “Why is it that when, culturally, something is beloved by teenage girls, and people who aren't men... why is it affiliated with this sense of cringe and it being low brow and embarrassing? I feel like we've seen so much dissection of this in in the last year and a half with Taylor Swift's tour. I don't know how to feel about the fact that the show first premiered in 2019, but it feels as prescient as ever.”
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This is where the initial idea for Fangirls stemmed from, with the play being informed by Blake’s own research. As well as learning more about a number of weird and wonderful fan tributes – including one group of enterprising One Direction fans who quickly erected a memorial plaque at the non-descript road-side site where Styles vomited after a night out in 2014 – she was pleasantly surprised by the sense of community she found beyond the immediate madness.
“I assumed that this subculture would be about young women competing with each other for the affection of a male idol,” she says. “But quickly, I was like, oh, no, this is actually a really beautiful space that's about friendship, chosen family and community.
“The more I researched, the more I kept on learning about these wholesome elements of it. It should be said, the show is not uncritical: it’s about what it means to worship a celebrity in 2024, and what that does to our brains. The show isn't afraid to look at the dark elements of parasocial relationships. It's interesting if you grow up in a world where you can see constant Instagram posts from your favorite celebrity, and commenting and directly messaging him is a tap away. Generationally, it's so interesting that people are growing up with more and more perceived accessibility.”
The play centres on 14-year-old pop megafan Edna, who is obsessed with a wildly successful boy band called Heartbreak Nation and, in particular, their leading heartthrob Harry. Though his name might bring to mind a certain ringleader turned solo star, Blake insists “he’s not Harry Styles. He's this wonderful salad of so many different ideas, of different pop stars. He’s a bit BTS, a bit Shawn Mendes, a bit Justin Bieber, a bit One Direction, a bit Taylor Swift.”
While other fans scramble to secure tickets to Heartbreak Nation’s upcoming tour, Edna is just as fixated on a huge scandal she believes she’s uncovered with a close circle of chronically online fans: Harry is secretly depressed, and desperate to escape the limelight, but management are forcing him to stay in the band. Keen to help, Edna and her internet pal Saltypringl hatch a plan of action – and by the time the interval rolls around, things have taken a rather dark turn.
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“The stakes get really extremely high. In Act One, you've got a 14 year old girl, and everything in her life feels like it's life or death, because that’s how it feels to be a teenager.” Blake decided it would be interesting to heighten the drama accordingly during the second half. “It's a show about extreme feelings, right? And so why not take things to an extreme?”
In Australia, audience members have approached Fangirls like a stadium pop concert, some even bringing along handmade signs to wave for the fictional Heartbreak Nation. Blake has everything crossed that UK audiences respond in a similarly “feral” manner, and is keen to offer a raucous, connected experience in the theatre.
“I fell in love with theatre as a teenager, but I just remember going ‘Huh, I can't imagine a world in which I could get someone my age – which was like, 15 – to come with me to the theatre.’ You have to sit there and be so polite. You can’t pee until it's over. And you have to clap at the end, even if it's good or bad. You have to be really quiet and still. Compare that to the energy of a gig where you get to sweat and scream, and there’s adrenaline….”
Lots of plays recently which dabble with pop music, from Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow’s musical Six, to the Max Martin-powered And Juliet, seem interested in conjuring a similar atmosphere.
“A generation of theatre makers seem really interested in reimagining what theatrical spaces can feel like. I think it's really exciting. It can feel really elitist,” she says. “I often say that I made this show as a present to my 14-year-old self.”
Fangirls is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until August 24
