After a successful 2025 Camden Fringe run, Emily Alice Ambrose’s debut play Girl Kisser returns to the stage from 7–11 April for a self-dubbed ‘second date’ at The Lion and Unicorn Theatre. Girl Kisser certainly ticks all the boxes of a good second date, while also living up to the promise of its name: it’s a wholesome, intimate and refreshingly honest story of queer love, friendship and community.
Ambrose says the play was born out of a project that asked queer Gen Zs to ‘share their stories and desires for representation,’ however Girl Kisser doesn’t just rely on stereotypes or recycled tropes. Each of the five ‘girl kissers’ is a fully fleshed-out character navigating a maze of friendships and love, whilst also trying to carve out spaces for joy within themselves and the wider world. Girl Kisser takes place across two of those spaces, the first being their flatshare, where the characters exchange some of their most intimate moments. What’s special about Ambrose’s writing is that although the flat is their home, it’s not where the characters are their most vulnerable — that takes place in their at-risk event space below — perhaps a statement on the significance and scarcity of queer event spaces. During solo gigs and monologues, we are introduced to the characters’ truest selves.
Through her portrayal of lovestruck singer-songwriter Amy, Ambrose also weaves her tender songwriting into the play. The music is genuinely enjoyable and has a similarly bewitching effect on the play’s other characters. Amelia Pestka-Buthelezi is hilarious as Amy’s ex Emery, but underneath the comedy, the actor still leaves space for an unspoken longing to seep through. In contrast, Lucie Law instantly gives us Diana at her most flirtatious and cheeky, only to later snatch her back into her shell. The character would be insufferable if not for the amount of complexity and humanity Law and Ambrose have both breathed into her.
Laoi Curtin is soothing and humorous as Finlay, the organiser-manager of their event space. Through monologues, Finlay shines as a beacon of stability, joy and safety for all the other characters, but especially Juliana. Every emotion felt by the audience, every feeling Girl Kisser captures is embodied by the wholesome, heartbreaking, hilarious Juliana. This is a character who epitomises the confusion and contradiction of life as a queer person in their early twenties, and Charlotte Clements executes the role so masterfully that it would be hard for any audience member who has ever loved someone, longed for something or felt out of place not to be moved after the actor’s monologues as Juliana.
Though Girl Kisser often touches on the topic of queer joy, it’s not a comedy, nor is it unrealistic in its optimism. An ending that ties everything up neatly might have been easier to sit with, but perhaps would have taken something from the honesty of the play and disrupted the overall balance. What makes Girl Kisser so satisfying is how equally real, agonising and funny it is. What makes the play excellent is that it is all those things, while still managing to be succinct, memorable and relevant.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
