CATFISH THE MUSICAL (Turbine Theatre/Stream Theatre)***

 

By Louise

Link: https://www.stream.theatre/home

Available until: Live performances Sunday 1^st November at 2.30pm and 7.30pm.

I might be the wrong person to review this. It’s about being a teenager, which I know quite a lot about, but it’s all about social media and I don’t have instagram or twitter or anything like that. I think there is too much nastiness and toxicity on there. You’re never safe from the bullies and it’s like being at school the whole time and never coming home.

This musical has really made me feel that avoiding social media is the right decision. Not so much because not everyone is necessarily who they pretend to be. Because it’s an emotional minefield and it’s one more place to be scared of making a mistake – partly because not knowing whether to correct it or not is even more scary.

Catfish is about a boy called Jackson who joins a dating app and starts talking to a really lovely girl called Jessica. Everything seems to be going really well till Jessica suddenly refers to Jackson as a girl. Jackson then realises he chose the wrong gender when he signed up. Jackson isn’t a girl – and Jessica is a lesbian. Jackson then has a choice to make. He decides not to tell her the truth.

I have very mixed feelings about the plot and the decisions people made but I know I can be much too fussy about things like that. I feel really uncomfortable about the plot of Dear Evan Hansen too and most people really love it and I’m sure they’re right.

But I really like the music, which is by Willy Mukendi (who also wrote the book) and Joseph Purdue. There are some really nice tunes which are lovely to listen to and sound like they would be fun to sing. A couple of the songs are really moving. Anything sung by Jackie Pulford, who plays The Victim’s Mother, is really sad and emotional and I also really liked Low Battery, sung by DD (Georgia Jade) and Caught in the Web, sung by Girl#1 (Olivia Hallett).

The actors are also really good. Harry Simpson is obviously well-meaning as Jackson – he doesn’t mean to hurt anyone. He just doesn’t want a good thing to come to an end. Jamie O’Leary is likeable as Alex, and Emily Badger’s confident Jessica makes Jackson’s worries about telling the truth understandable.

I think a lot of people really love this musical though so maybe you shouldn’t pay too much attention to what I say.