If it’s been eight years since One Direction broke up and you’re still licking your wounds, you’re in luck – while the band won’t be getting back together for one last tour anytime soon, brand new London opener Fangirls might be just the thing for them.
Australian screenwriter Yve Blake’s musical premiered in its home country in 2019 to rave reviews and multiple awards, including the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Main Stage Musical Production. Now, a revamped, enhanced version with a brand-new cast (but still with the same Australian accents) is coming to London to perform at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre.
When Blake and I talk, he and the cast are nearing the end of rehearsals: they’ve just finished a section of the show that turns the musical into a full-on pop concert. The new set has LED floor panels and “production values beyond my wildest dreams.” It also features theater choreographer Ebony Williams, who has collaborated with the likes of Rihanna and Beyoncé and choreographed Doja Cat’s world tour.
“What the f**k!” Blake exclaims. “I feel like the production that came together in London was a brand new production and a complete reinvention… I feel like all these really smart people are making my dream show. As a writer, you’re like a dad in the delivery room. There’s nothing you can do. I’m just sitting there crying happy tears. That’s how I feel right now.”
Blake says the initial inspiration for Fangirls came from the very real drama surrounding boy band One Direction. In 2015, more or less out of the blue, Zayn Malik announced that he was leaving the group, and Directioners (to give the group’s fans their official name) began to mourn. Following the news, the phrase “I’M CRYING” was tweeted four to six times a second, and fans processing his departure became “a worldwide news story,” Blake says.
“I was fascinated to find that journalists were using the same words over and over again when describing a group of One Direction fans who they assumed were mostly teenage girls,” Blake says. “The words they were looking for were: crazy, psychotic, hysterical, over-the-top, desperate, pathetic and a bit too much. I asked myself, would they use the same adjectives if they were reporting on a surprise in men’s sports?”
Fangirls, while it takes some dark and surreal turns and features a number of satirical plot elements, is at its core a celebration of young fans who are often underestimated and slighted. “Teenage girls have so much cultural and economic power. I think it’s so ironic that people roll their eyes at them,” she says. “Culturally, when something is loved by teenage girls and people who aren’t boys… why is it associated with this sense of shame and being vulgar and embarrassing? I feel like we’ve seen a lot of exploration of that in the last year and a half with Taylor Swift’s tour. I don’t know how I feel about the fact that the series first aired in 2019, but it feels as prescient as ever.”
That’s where the initial idea for Fangirls came from, and the game was inspired by Blake’s own research. Not only was he pleasantly surprised by the sense of community he found beyond the sudden madness, he also learned about a number of weird and wonderful fan tributes, including a group of enterprising One Direction fans who promptly erected a memorial plaque at the obscure roadside site where Styles threw up after walking out in 2014.
“I assumed this subculture was about young women competing with each other for the affection of a male idol,” she says. “But I immediately said, no, this is actually a really beautiful space about friendship, chosen family, and community.
“The more I researched, the more I kept learning about these healthy elements. I have to say, the show is not far from critical: 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 darker elements of parasocial relationships. It’s interesting if you grew up in a world where you could see your favorite celebrity’s constant Instagram posts and comment on them and direct message them. It’s interesting how, across generations, people have grown up with more and more perceived accessibility.”
The play centers on Edna, a 14-year-old pop mega-fan who’s obsessed with a wildly successful boy band called Heartbreak Nation, and in particular, their lead heartthrob, Harry. While the name may bring to mind a certain ringleader turned solo star, Blake says, “He’s not Harry Styles. He’s a great salad of many different ideas, different pop stars. A little bit of BTS, a little bit of Shawn Mendes, a little bit of Justin Bieber, a little bit of One Direction, a little bit of Taylor Swift.”
While other fans scramble to get tickets to Heartbreak Nation’s upcoming tour, Edna and her inner circle of chronic online fans are obsessed with a huge scandal that she believes she has discovered: Harry is secretly depressed and desperate to escape the spotlight, but management is trying to force him to stay in the band. Eager to help, Edna and her internet friend Saltypringl come up with a plan of action, and by the time the break arrives, things have taken a very dark turn.
“The stakes get really high. In Act One, you’ve got a 14-year-old girl, and everything in her life feels like life or death, because that’s what being a teenager is like.” Blake decided it would be interesting to ramp up the drama accordingly in the second half. “This is a show about extreme emotions, right? So why not take things to the extreme?”
In Australia, audiences approached Fangirls like a stadium pop concert, with some even bringing homemade banners to wave to the fictional Heartbreak Nation. Blake ignored the fact that UK audiences had responded in a similarly “savage” way, keen to deliver a raucous, connected experience in the theatre.
“I fell in love with the theatre when I was young, but I just remember thinking, ‘Huh, I can’t imagine anyone my age – who was 15 – coming to the theatre with me.’ You have to sit there and be very polite. You can’t take a piss until it’s over. And at the end you have to applaud, whether it’s good or bad. You have to be really quiet and still. Compare that to the energy of a concert where you’re sweating and screaming and the adrenaline is there….”
Many recent plays dealing with pop music seem to attempt to create a similar atmosphere, from Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow’s musical Six to Max Martin’s staging of And Juliet.
“There seems to be a generation of theatre makers who are really interested in reimagining what theatre spaces can feel like. I think that’s really exciting. It can feel really elitist,” she says. “I often say I made this show as a gift to my 14-year-old self.”
Fangirls runs at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until August 24