Emma-Louise Howell will go far.
A frantic, fierce, and fresh hour of unflinching, unforgiving anger
I just wanted to start with that bit out of the way early doors; because I would like to be thanked fulsomely and publicly when she goes all PWB on us. Which she will. You heard it here first.
I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life is a frantic, fierce, and fresh hour of unflinching, unforgiving anger. At its heart is Belles (Howell), washed up at 24: with bills to pay and a mother to disappoint.
We first meet Belles when she is eking out a miserable existence at one of the soul-destroying Princess parties which regularly suck the life-blood from virgin actors. And if you don't know what a Princess Party is, don't worry too much about it. Just mark yourself on social media as safe from synthetic fibres and corporate manipulation and move on.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Howell's gives us one of the best opening monologues in theatre; and the laughs come thick and fast from then on. But so does the desperation. The suffocation of poverty. And the realization that toxic femininity doesn't dissolve at the same pace as the ink of scrawled signatures on school shirts when the doors are flung open to the big wide world.
Belles' ends up down a wormhole of get rich quick schemes, bitchy girl bosses and - most egregious of all - women who spend most of their lives trying to manifest wall art slogans. As she twists and turns between expectation and self-evaluation, she loses pieces of herself between the cracks of the evocative visuals which blink, swirl and zoom behind her. The piece follows her particular story; but has a universal target... those who don't just prey on the vulnerable, but those who do so under cover of apparent compassion and liberation.
Whilst I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life probably won't; what it will do is smack you round the dramatic chops, put up a rocket up your soundbites, and introduce you to one of our undoubted stars of the future.
