The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut

I’ve never particularly been a fan of teenagers. Even when I was one I found it a struggle to relate, particularly to the many in my school who had a great enthusiasm for drama and tended to be loud and obnoxious. Or else simply very talented and enviable. Either way, dramatic or exhibitionist teenagers were not appreciated a great deal by my young and awkward self.

In The Fat Girl… The Roundhouse has bravely recruited a group of 12 teenagers to perform a series of performances to emphasise the trials and tribulations of adolescence. Who better to portray this complex broth of emotional turmoil than those peculiar little creatures themselves?

My first impressions did nothing but support my trepidation. I walked into the circular room filled with the audience seated around the stage, while the 12 cast members stood spread around the room behind them, each lit by a spotlight which threw half of their faces into shadow creating an atmosphere of reverence.

A light tinkling of soft piano music, resembling the rustling of wind chimes began and the spotlights fall away, leaving just one halo of light singling out an anaemic looking youth with a spray of blond hair and pale skin. The audience start to notice him as he begins to undress, and while I was ready to mock in my mind and hide a smile, something about his manner; how solemn and ritualistically he does this prevents me from doing so.

The play continues on this note of intrigue; 12 stories, bizarrely titled in the programme though uniquely performed by each cast member, all have their own significance, each tale is one personal to the artist themselves which adds hugely to the tone of the piece.

They translate their personal experiences of the stormy transition from adolescence to adulthood delicately yet simplistically with tales of trauma and bullying, addressed in a peculiar manner that is instantly possible to relate to. There are also painful recounts of loss, and emphasis on the confusion and frustration associated with first romance and of course, the confusion of sex.

What is very impressive about these scenes is that they gradually wind themselves together, and while there are many rather intense performances of woe and hurt, thrown between any emotional drama are brightly funny shorts referencing inappropriate (and indeed, appropriate) crushes on teachers and what it’s like to have a hot dad.

As each scene unfolds, the whole work seems that the performances are individual even though they link together fluidly. It is only towards the end of the last chapter that it suddenly seems that it is wrapping itself together and gives an overall impression of completion.

Watching the separate stories from separate lives ultimately leaves the viewer with a story of adolescent struggles, walking the viewer through the awkward experiences of childhood and adolescence. They contemplate the weight and freedom of adulthood before emerging from the suffocating cocoon of puberty, then released as fully formed and content.

It is this feeling, assisted by brilliant performances of a complicated web of artistic performance, which allows the viewer to relive this painful time in their life, yet perhaps with a happier ending. While some parts seem drawn out, slowing the hour-and-a-half performance, having personally experienced the horrors of adolescence, the satisfaction felt as the last scene unfolds makes this collection of tales worth watching.

The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut and Other Stories is showing until 7 May at

Roundhouse
Chalk Farm Road
Camden
NW1 8EH

Tel: 0844 482 8008

Image by Stephen King