Bloom Girl | Charli Burrowes
Brightly coloured neon signs with 80's songs and swinging 40's numbers. I look back to my youth and think of the soft glamour of the new romantics and the Sydney punks dressed in black when times were less commercialised, and our lives hadn’t become a caricature of themselves in the digital yet. I see a vamp blonde before me, a Newtown version - the sassy main character of ‘Bloom Girl’. The lead actor steps on stage played by Charli Burrowes. A copywriter by trade looking for validation in her career and personal life. She risks it all.
Flashing neon, shirt covered in blood, on her phone with the sounds of an emergency hospital ward, the show starts and ends here.
“What’s a cunt?” A small voice asks from within the whirs of a waiting room.
In this digital age, a cunt can mean anything, but this script delves into a myriad of characters and side stories to take you down that velvety hole. It’s an influencers’ domain, and with a deft swipe left or right, in a second you can decide whether they’ve made it or not. Imagery of a carefully created world of poetry books, a half-eaten peach, a beguiling pose on a beige couch and albums of even more perfect photos to choose from. You’ll have to see the show to find out.
Bloom girl is like listening to a live diary the whole world knows about at each witty comment, but as we find out happiness as a brand is not real happiness.
The yearning to be ‘seen’, the place where you feel safe and loved and if someone sees you there, it might be worth it, but you know it’s out of reach, yet you still want it. Maybe if you slept with a safe, rich guy or got the Botox you could be like them too? Post a bunch of cool girl selfies and two push up bras and the right filter refreshing for comments might just help.
Charli with Director Elise Lamb. All Images: Fraser
“What’s sex?” The small voice asks again.
Bloom Girl: It’s when you rub your bits together until they explode
“Is that why your nose is bleeding?” The small voice replies.
Bloom Girl takes us to her world, a world of instant attention, interaction, gratification. Of being hyper alert ready for the next beep and armed with the next retort complete with the right hashtag. It reminds us of how demanding being connected to social media is, and what it like to be an influencer seeing what other influencers do. I’m led to think perhaps social media is a virus when I hear the mispronounced influenza spoken.
But wanting it all comes at a cost – how far are you willing to seek validation? How much debt, loss of friendship, dating fails, and business connections will it take to come on top? For me, this is a world quite foreign as someone in their forties not emmeshed in growing up with the aspiration of wanting to be a youtuber or influencer as my career goal. Yet I see her world and her resilience.
The audience is reflected by a Gen Z and Millennial crowd, and by the gentlemen a couple of seats down from me who laughs hysterically at the portrayal of a failed sex scene. Yep, toe sucking. I’m sure even he knows it’s not a thing to do on your first tryst and would probably end up on some random backwater page on the internet. Influencing, dating with fuckery comes with lots of hilarity, nipple pics and an ode to Kate Bush.
The messaging of how social media distracts us from living, the beauty of imperfection and the subtlety of unplugging more for a wholesome existence was a nice undertone. The instant message dings were loud and annoying and added to the clutter that social media produces and the need to be on edge contextualising these messages wonderfully.
While Bloom Girl presents an amusing snapshot of the life of an influencer, I felt the show needed a clearer delineation between the characters especially when things were hitting their emotional peak. This would have provided more depth including mixing up the tonal qualities in the characterisations. I would have loved to have seen the infamous red dress as an additional prop.
The sequencing of the story flowed easier towards the end as the main arc resolved itself towards a most heart-warming bittersweet final twist through the remarkable insight and the innocence of youth was a most welcome touch. The play is overall very witty, highly original and the scenarios are well thought out engaging me for the full 120 mins. Keep ‘Running Up That Hill’ Bloom Girl.
Bloom Girl is written and performed by Charli Burrowes and is directed by Elise Lamb. It plays at The Thomas Dixon Centre, West End until 11 February 2023.
