EDINBURGH 2023: Review: BREAK UP WITH YOUR BOYFRIEND, Pleasance Courtyard

Breakups are never fun… but they do lead to fun theatre. In Break Up With Your Boyfriend, heartbreak leads us on a sleepover odyssey of wine, yoga, red flags, and hinge dates. Company Scylla’s Bite have created a warm, touching hour of theatre that will resonate with many.

As the show begins, we meet long-term best friends Cassie and Jo - the former has just been dumped over the phone, and so girls' night transforms into a quest to help her get over her ex. While it originally seems like traditional theatre, the drama is soon interspersed with movement sequences, lip-syncing, audience interaction, skits, and a good old dance party. Particularly enjoyable scenes include when the two actors perform separate monologues in parallel, illustrating their opposing journeys. 

One of the best elements of Break Up With Your Boyfriend is its delicate balance of girlish joy and heartfelt pain. Several of the sketch-style moments and pop culture references are laugh-out-loud funny, but at the same time the show contains some absolutely crushing monologues about sexual assault and abusive relationships. It really encompasses growing up as a young woman, drawing attention to experiences that are difficult to talk about. Abbie Lowe as Cassie and Rebekah Smith as Jo give lovely, genuine performances - Smith especially has some really stunning moments of relatability. It's nice to watch the touch of queerness develop, sweet and pure. 

Break Up With Your Boyfriend has the potential to be a really fantastic show - it just needs some tightening up. The pacing is a little slow, a little strange at times, with too many pauses and some awkward transitions. Considering the show was fully written and created by Lowe and Smith, it feels like what this production needs to step up a level is an external director - with a fresh eye and a few easy fixes, it could have much more energy, much more impact. 

There’s some really fun lighting design from Ash Strain, and the set design has some great moments as different props with each of the five stages of grief on are gradually revealed to comedic effect. It would have been nice to see more of the sleepover atmosphere brought out - at one point the pair cook a mug cake on stage, making the whole room smell of warm chocolate. More of this vibe would strengthen the show a lot - some strings of fairy lights wouldn’t go amiss.

Nonetheless, this is a show with a huge amount of heart. It’s clear that the company care so much about the piece and its themes. They also have the lovely touch of offering a ‘burn book’ at the end - they encourage audiences to write down traumatic experiences in a notebook that they will burn at the end of their run. 

Break Up With Your Boyfriend is a warm hug of a show, and such a supportive environment to be in - definitely worth catching if the Fringe chaos is starting to get you down!

Break Up With Your Boyfriend runs at Pleasance Courtyard until 28 August.

Image Credit: Ruby Belassie

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