REVIEW: Miranda Michalowski's SATURDAY GIRLS Is A Heartwarming And Humerous Exploration Of Navigating Female Friendships And Adolescence.

Friday 11th August 2023, 7:45pm, Downstairs Theatre Belvoir St Theatre

Presented as part of Belvoir St Theatre’s 25A series, SATURDAY GIRLS is an honest expression of the teen female experience with the added challenge of sexual discovery.  Written by Miranda Michalowski and directed by LJ Wilson, this work is relatable, realistic, and really likable.

SATURDAY GIRLS centers on Sam (Mym Kwa) and Joey (Lucy Burke), two girls in year 10 at a prestigious private school in Sydney.  The girls have been best friends for years, but they’ve grown apart of late.  Sure, Joey signed up for the Dance team, which trains on Saturday, because Sam was on the team and the school required all students to participate a Saturday physical activity group, but she’s drifting into a new friendship with popular girl Gabby (Candice Mejias) and her values have become somewhat compromised as she sees popularity and image as more important than her reputation.  She’s left reeling when she’s betrayed by her ex-boyfriend, a year 12 student and while she’s navigating who she should and shouldn’t trust, she’s sidelining Sam who has her own issues surrounding her identity and Rory (Brandon Scane), her friend from the Debate team.

Soham Apte anchors the work in a high school with a stage designed to represent a basketball court with line markings on a lightwood timber floor.  The school motto and logo features on the wall while lockers and bulletin board flank the stage. Projections and animations allow the space to represent other spaces like the school library and a train ride. Esther Zhong’s costume design reinforces the shift from weekend dance training and school scenes while also highlighting the differing social and economic ‘status’ of the students when they are out of uniform.

Miranda Michalowski has created an insightful and honest expression of teen girl behavior and she has ensured that there is a timelessness to the story even though more contemporary issues of every student having a phone and the ability to share images plays a major role in the plot.  Throughout time, there have been bitchy ‘popular’ girls, those that wanted to be part of that crowd but always sitting on the periphery, waiting to be ‘noticed’, and those that had higher values and had no interest in changing themselves to be liked.  LJ Wilson ensures the cast deliver an honest expression of Michalowski’s characters, making sure that Mejias’ expression of Gabby is evolves from questionable to outright awful while Burke allows Joey to devolve and evolve as she wakes up to what is really important.  Kwa keeps Sam likable, vulnerable, courageous and a relatively steady constant but she ensures that even the most stoic can be unsettled when the school rumor mill fires up.  As the sole male that appears in the story, Scane ensures that, while flawed, Rory presents an expression of the teen boys that we want them to be, ultimately respectful to a female’s choice once he is educated by Sam when he briefly drifts into unacceptable behavior fueled by his desire to keep his basketball ‘buddies’ happy. 

SATURDAY GIRLS covers some weighty topics, but they are balanced with a good dose of humor in relatable moments and the absurd things that teens say.  There are strong messages to both young women and young men about consent, popularity, friendships and being genuine, all things that young people, and the not so young, need to navigate.  There is a lot packed into the 75 minute show with some great physical expressions and honest expressions of the underlying emotions that evolve making this a powerful piece of theatre for all ages.

https://belvoir.com.au/productions/saturday-girls/