Shewolves review

Fourteen-year-old Derby teenager Lou (Harriet Waters) is holding a silent protest at school to save the planet. The school doesn’t like it, but if Greta can do it, so can Lou. But Priya (Gurjot Dhaliwal) doesn’t really buy Lou’s sermons about climate catastrophe and rising seas. After all, as she points out, Rose survived the rising water in Titanic. Besides, she’s got more pressing problems at home, and she knows adding her voice won’t help: she’s already been written off. By everyone, including herself:  “Nobody listens to me.”

But when circumstances bring the pair together, they discover that they have more in common than they thought, even though they come from very different backgrounds and levels of privilege, and have very different attitudes towards life. They both have something to understand about each other’s home lives and, bonding over pop tarts, they soon discover that while nobody listens to them individually, they can make themselves heard when they howl together.

Part of an arts project amplifying the voices of young women and non-binary teens, Sarah Middleton’s play may be a slightish slice of teenage wish fulfilment and fairytale, but there is something about its undoubted sparkiness that is enormously appealing – just like its two heroines who are played with such arresting joie de vivre. Of course, it is much harder to really change the world and your own situation than this play lets on, but I was tickled by these fringe first-timers’ shiny optimism and celebration of teenage empowerment.