teen melodrama
“We Used To Be Girl Scouts” is one of nine shows being performed at this year’s Fringe, by students and recent graduates of the acting and directing programmes from Edinburgh Napier.
Written by Emery Schaffer, our story follows three American sophomore high-school students – Mary (played by Hannah-Mae Engstrom), Sasha (Samuela Noumchuet) and Drew (Trystan Youngjohn). Newcomer Mary is a pastor’s daughter, planning to run away from her abusive family, Drew thinks she might be pregnant, and Sasha is drumming up the courage to tell her best friend Drew that she’s in love with her. They meet, and end up spending time together in the woods, plotting their escape.
The script and setting are unashamedly American, complete with some references that don’t translate entirely outside the US, but they are generally carried off by the cast. Other elements, such as skirting the word ‘abortion’ felt needlessly coy, even for teens.
What was more of an issue were a number of inconsistencies in the script – could we really be persuaded to believe that a pastor’s daughter who was banned from Harry Potter would have the Hunger Games as a cultural touchstone? Or that a teen lesbian would write her twice-daily practised speech on what just so happens to be the pregnancy pages of Cosmopolitan? Or that Drew wouldn’t have confided sooner in her best friend after losing her virginity, and only reveal it some weeks later under duress? Similarly, why was Mary pushing the duo about trusting her, after only a couple of hours in her company? Perhaps more stringent editing could have ironed out these at an earlier stage, and as a result, it feels a bit flat in both drama and comedy .
Aside from this, the cast performances are strong – there’s a lot of melodramatic stomping, just to underline we’re dealing with teens, however, they play their assigned roles well. Samuela displays a natural flair for physical expression in particular. The highlight is the addendum that they add to the Girl Scout promise, and it would have been fantastic to see this energy and flair repeated elsewhere in the show.
Overall, whilst a perfectly fine time was had, and the audience seemed happy – it felt very much like a run-of-the-mill teen drama episode, complete with tropes and Garden State-esque screams. Given this is being performed in the Edinburgh Fringe, this seemed a wasted opportunity to get stuck into something ultimately more satisfying, and challenging to showcase the obvious talents of all involved.
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/we-used-to-be-girl-scouts