Theatre503 – until 3 May 2025
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
Amy Powell Yeates’ gloriously funny and perceptive play about lifelong friendship has lines and situations that will resonate with everyone in the audience.
Beginning in 1998 with Charlie and Debs trying to cope with the splintering of the Spice Girls, the play follows the pair’s friendship over the next 25 years.
From schoolgirl crushes and worries – with pledges of lifelong friendship and promises to live together when they’re older, through their twenties with contrasting lives of student frugality and more comfortable job security, the pair’s relationship ups and downs are observed brilliantly.
The ridiculous intensity of creating dance routines and your own catchphrase as you are struggling to discover yourself and clinging to each other for support are captured by the wonderful Olivia Forrest as Charlie and Rosa Robson as Debs. Their dancing, scattered throughout the show, are hilarious and a fantastic nod to the French and Saunders dance sketches from that era.
As the years pass, the pair’s priorities change and their meetings are sometimes fraught as the brutal honesty and love that works when you see each other everyday hits differently when you get together less often. The women’s dependence on each other shifts and swings like a pendulum as their careers and relationships develop, and arguments develop, but we never need to see these resolved as these little deaths of a friendship like this are never permanent.
Amy Powell Yeates evokes nostalgia and portrays the depth and support of true friendship with wit and heart. For two characters who talk so much, what remains unsaid hits just as hard – sometimes they don’t need words to convey their love. Although when it comes to judging and commenting on each other’s choices, they don’t hold back!
Claire O’Reilly’s smart direction allows Olivia Forrest and Rosa Robson to shine with fantastic energy and glorious physical performances that capture the ages of the characters. Both are wonderful comedic actors, and convince in the quiet, more reflective moments.
A wonderfully warm, wise and witty celebration of female friendship, Little Deaths is a fantastic show to see with your bestie. You’ll dance home!