Review: SWIFTIES, Theatre N16

Yasmin and Nina have won a competition to meet their idol, multi-award winning songstress and all round Little Miss Perfect, Taylor Swift. Holed up in a hotel room, the two Luton girls see it as their chance to join The Swifties, Tay Tay's entourage, and fantasise about the life they will lead in New York, Las Vegas and LA. But, rehearsing what they will do when they finally meet her, acting it out repeatedly, complete with dress-up and role-play, things take a dark turn when the obsessive nature of fandom curdles into sadomasochistic dreams of murder.

Loosely based on Jean Genet's The Maids, Tom Stenton has written a two-hander that packs plenty of ideas into its all-through 60 minutes or so running time. Of course, there are plenty of references to the impact of social media, to the drabness of life in 21st century jobs in a deadend town (the girls work in an Amazon Fulfilment Centre) and to the fragile self-esteem that sits at the heart of such devotion to a person about whom they know both everything (her public life) and nothing (her private life). There are tangential storylines too about the vulnerability of stars to false allegations of criminal behaviour and to the media's role in creating figures who act as role models, yet live lives as distant from their fans as the Tsar was distant from his serfs a century ago.

All those ideas jostling for attention (there's a whole other strand that suggests Nina and Yasmin are actually one girl split in two by the conflict between love and hate raging in Nina/Yasmin's mind), the room for dramatic development is somewhat constrained. There's too much repetition at times and the narrative can sag a little as the girls wait for the call to ascend to Tay Tay's penthouse - a call that never comes of course. There's a stronger play in here but it's 20 minutes shorter than the script as presented but includes an additional Act Two, as yet unwritten.

Isabella Niloufar and Tanya Cubric play the girls with great energy, the tiny space unforgiving to actors less than wholly committed. They're fearless in the intensity they bring to the roles, but I couldn't shake off the impression that they had just a bit too much inner confidence to convince as sink estate kids. Both stand, move and speak like the beautiful people they are, with none of the shoulder slump and drawled speech so characteristic of those beaten down by a system that offers them little beyond the unattainable glitz and vicarious glamour of Tay Tay, Beyonce and Kylie Jenner, celebrity Instagram feeds and frenzied fansites.

It's always commendable to see a play that looks 2017 life in the eye and reflects it back, saying something directly to its audience about their personal experiences. Swifties does that, but, as it stands, it feels more like a work in progress than a fully realised work, with some details needing to be fine tuned into a dramatically coherent whole, paring back some ideas to drive the narrative more strongly. That said, there's plenty of promise on show and I look forward to seeing how the cast and creatives develop in the future.

Swifties continues at Theatre N16 until 11 March.

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