The stage may be littered with bathroom detritus, but expect anything but toilet humour and gags from Piss Girls.
Female friendships have long since been formed, tested, and cemented in toilets since the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of toilets), and Piss Girls proves that theory all the more. Set in a number of different toilets over the years, the two-woman show tracks the ups and downs of a friendship from school until early adulthood in a heartwarming and often emotional tale.
A tight 45 minutes flies by before you know it, covering a far-reaching range of topics from periods and dating to sex and drugs. It might feel like too many themes, if only it weren’t set in a women’s bathroom, where it’s perfectly natural to fly from one thing to the next at rapid speed.
Even, or perhaps especially, when they’re at odds, Samantha Dilena and Brooke McCloy’s Faye and Gemma are believable from the very beginning. Their genuine dialogue keeps the play ticking along with a heartbeat that feels authentic to girlhood and then womanhood.
The choice to set Piss Girls in a bathroom allows the audience to tap into tricky themes as well as the trivial, with the anonymity of bathroom stalls offering the same level of honesty as a confessional or therapist’s chair. You’re right there with the girls as they grow into women and, despite not having long with either of them, you can’t help but wholly empathise with their plight at every stage.
Piss Girls is a must for anyone who’s ever had a weepy reconciliation in a bathroom – or anyone who might still yet have an old friend they want to find their way back to.
