Screeeeeeaaaammmmm!

It's possible I am actually a bit old for some things. Lots of other things here though, don't worry

The cast of Fangirls at the Lyric Hammersmith. Photo: Manuel Harlan

I may have overdosed on silly musicals recently. I might need to take a break.

On now

I’m glad I took a 12 year old (V) and not a grown adult to see Fangirls at the Lyric Hammersmith, on until August 24, but even she thought it was a bit far-fetched. She did, however, thoroughly enjoy it, despite, I suspect, not catching some of the more adult jokes. 

The story of a 14 year-old Australian boyband fan, Edna, who takes her obsession with its star singer Harry’s perceived loneliness (“he has depression eyes!”) to startling lengths, it’s also a sort of celebration of the strength and power of teen adoration. Or at least, I think it’s meant to be. What it actually does is make them look kind of insane.

The show has the high energy of a pop concert, but not the focus, and the songs are mostly fun, if a bit clunky in places - the wanging on at the end, in the song Maybe We’re More, about how teenage girls are told who to be and underestimated etc is really thudding stuff. But the brief boyband pastiches during the midway concert are almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

The performances, by a young cast, are hugely enjoyable in a frenetic way, though overall the whole shebang goes on for easily 20 minutes too long, giving it the feeling of an Edinburgh hit hastily expanded for a bigger stage (see also Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!).

And I’m not sure the celebratory aim quite hits the mark. As V (who knows all One Direction’s songs because she goes to an all-girls school, but couldn’t pick Louis Tomlinson out of a line-up and thinks Harry Styles was ‘the potato’ of the group, because every boyband has one) wisely said: “that was really good and really fun but then you think about it for a minute and you realise there actually are people like that in the world and it’s a bit worrying”. 

I had sort of forgotten about the Museum of the Home, which was refurbished rather beautifully in 2021, since the whole Robert Geffrye statue debacle (the 17th century merchant made the primary donation that enabled the building of the almshouses which the museum now occupies; he made part of his money from investments in transatlantic slavery, so inevitably his prominent statue on the front of the almshouses became a target after the refurb. You can read more about how they’re trying to please everyone here), but last week’s reopening of their Rooms Through Time gallery reminded me how much I liked it.

A Terraced House in 1978, at the Museum of the Home

If you don’t know it, among other displays the museum has a collection of accurate period interiors, set up to depict how people lived during a given era. Before, it could be said that it was perhaps a little fusty (the last redo of these rooms was 1998), but a new curatorial approach means not only that each room is now built around a personal story (inspired by real people) but also that as a group they far more closely reflect the richly diverse London community that surrounds the museum.