★★★

“Almost sung through, and brilliantly so, the musical has still to find its voice”

The rock musical, “I Was a Teenage She-Devil”, opens with a bang; and as though aware that the only way is up, it keeps the energy levels pushing the high end of the rev meter to danger point. Eighty minutes and twenty-two songs later we are a little bit breathless. The show’s protagonist claims she has been to ‘Hell and back’, but it would be a stretch for us to make a similar assertion. It really isn’t deep enough to get anywhere near the underworld.

Sean Matthew Whiteford, the one responsible for the book, music, lyrics and orchestrations, hit upon the idea fifteen years ago. Originally titled “Girlfriend from Hell” it is a mash up of eighties, horror, cult movies and high school musical. ‘Grease’ meets ‘Cruel Intentions’, with a deal with the Devil thrown in among the many other gore-infested influences. On paper it is a chaotic mess. On stage it is similarly anarchic and shambolic, yet it knows precisely its target audience and goes straight for the jugular.

The premise is wafer-thin (as are the characters). Set in an American High School, Nancy (Aoife Haakenson) is the four-eyed, nerdy wallflower ostracised by the popular kids – the jocks and the cheerleaders and the cool ones. Bullied to breaking point she cries out for help. To the rescue comes Satan (Sean Arkless) with an offer she can’t refuse. The price is her soul. Obviously. The outcome is a bit of a bloodbath. Revenge is far from sweet, but redemption is a sugar rush.

Tiffani (Caitlin Anderson) is banned from the cheerleader squad for being cruel to Nancy. Aided by her boyfriend Big Rod (Jordan Fox) she decides to humiliate Nancy. We are not sure why Nancy delves into such pits of despair – she seems to be supported by (very) close friend Debbie (Ashley Goh). But love is blind, remember, and before we can open our eyes we have to experience the darkness. We know exactly where this story is going, every step of the way. Yet it is a funny and farcical romp through the guitar-powered score and the witty dialogue, firmly rooted in the eighties. There are constant references to the movies that inform the text, many of which would go over our heads if it weren’t for video-store worker Doobie (Jacob Birch) on hand to explain the joke. Completing the line up are Todd (Louis Hearsey) and Heather (Charis Stockton).

The script, like the song list, highlights the ensemble nature of the show. The supporting characters have some of the best lines, and everyone has their solo number. All eight cast members have the vocal ability, agility and variety to scale the heights of the rock belt and also to dip into the smooth waters of the ballads (Goh, in particular, achieves this with the dynamic ‘Looking for Love’). They say the Devil has all the best tunes, but here he has to share them with his co-stars. ‘Raise Some Hell’ is exactly what it says on the tin – an ensemble piece heralding Nancy’s transformation into spiky bad girl. Arkless’ Satan is more seventies Glam, while wearing the studded jockstrap pilfered form eighties band Cameo’s lead singer. It (the song – not necessarily the jockstrap) is a highlight, bathed in smoke, red light and gleeful appreciation from the audience. We are in Rocky Horror territory at times (‘Satanic Panic’), but the bulk of the repertoire – along with the hair styles and costume – is power pop through and through.

Director and choreographer Rachel Klein has her work cut out keeping the cast within the confines of the venue’s studio space. With the audience up close, and with the abundance of severed limbs flying around, safety must be an issue. And there’s the crux. The show errs on the safe and the predictable. A superficiality, and a mildness even, that the high-octane performances can’t disguise. Almost sung through, and brilliantly so, the musical has still to find its voice. While the characters are either looking for love or revenge or blood, we are looking for the teeth that can draw that blood. It won’t raise Hell. But it is easy to swallow, and a whole lot of fun with a devilishly fine cast.

THE LAST DAYS OF LIZ TRUSS?

The Other Palace

★★★

“An entertaining and occasionally sharp piece of political theatre”

A play about Liz Truss arrives with an odd sense of temporal dislocation. Chronologically, her premiership only ended little more than three years ago, yet the relentless chaos that has filled the intervening period makes it feel like ancient history. That feeling of distance is difficult to shake, and The Last Days of Liz Truss?, for all its energy and wit, doesn’t always persuade you that there is fertile ground to till.

Initially drenched in the red, white and blue lights of a Union Jack, a melodic saxophone sighing in the background, Truss sits centre stage: forlorn, yet defiant. Over the following near two-hour running time, writer Greg Wilkinson takes us on a largely chronological journey through her rise and fall, framed by her last morning at Number Ten. The premise promises an exploration, comic and tragic in equal measure, of the tensions between ambition and ability, between vision and political reality.

There is no shortage of sharp wordplay and knowing jokes. Early on, Wilkinson draws on Truss’s real name — she was born Mary Elizabeth — for a riff on divided loyalties: in Tudor England, you were either for Elizabeth or for Mary, never both. It is a line that delights in its own neatness, and the play has many others, such as a recurring callback to karaoke sessions with Thérèse Coffey that’s reliably mined for laughs. Yet for all the verbal dexterity, the script only occasionally gets beneath the surface of its subject. Glimpses of the person behind the politician emerge — most intimately, a childhood insistence on being Elizabeth rather than Mary — but they remain just that: glimpses.

The script vacillates between skewering and sympathy. The office of prime minister is not presented as a particularly dignified one, and Wilkinson leans into the idea that Truss was poorly advised. Yet this is balanced by the sheer Truss-ness of our protagonist: a character constitutionally oblivious, who assumes that any challenge is confirmation of her correctness, and who accepts no blame for anything — making for a compelling portrait, if not always a complete one.

Emma Wilkinson Wright is an excellent Truss, with Director Anthony Shrubsall working with her to find moments of vulnerability and humanity that go beyond what the script alone provides. That peculiar stiffness so familiar from television is rendered with impressive naturalism, and she captures the clipped declarations and curious combination of defiance and bafflement that defined Truss’s public persona, occasionally revealing something more human than television ever did. The set and costume design (Male Arcucci) is a thoughtful complement, the Swatch watch and Claire’s Accessories jewellery quietly doing the work of making Truss seem relatable — a woman of the people, or at least trying to be. Steve Nallon, as the voice of Margaret Thatcher (a skill honed during his years on Spitting Image) and others, provides effective voiceover support, though some recorded impressions lack energy, leaving the central performance with less to play off than it deserves.

As the production moves towards its conclusion, Truss pivots into something approaching Cassandra: a prophet dismissed, warning of a Britain diminished by its reluctance to grow. The lighting design (Tom Younger) is particularly effective here, the stage darkening and contracting as she speaks, the shrinking state rendered with quiet visual intelligence. The ending, however, strains credibility — Truss acquiring a near-supernatural prescience that had eluded her throughout, tipping the play away from character study and into prophetic monologue.

Truss is a fascinating political footnote, and this production is at its best when it leans into that strangeness. But it ultimately leaves you wondering whether, perhaps, a footnote is all she should be consigned to. An entertaining and occasionally sharp piece of political theatre, but one that feels more like a chronicle than a reckoning. The question mark in the The Last Days of Liz Truss? promises interrogation; the play itself rarely delivers it.

Tag Archives: The Other Palace

I WAS A TEENAGE SHE-DEVIL

★★★

The Other Palace

I WAS A TEENAGE SHE-DEVIL

The Other Palace

★★★

“Almost sung through, and brilliantly so, the musical has still to find its voice”

I WAS A TEENAGE SHE-DEVIL

The Other Palace

Reviewed on 8th April 2026

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Lidia Crisafulli

I WAS A TEENAGE SHE-DEVIL

I WAS A TEENAGE SHE-DEVIL

I WAS A TEENAGE SHE-DEVIL

THE LAST DAYS OF LIZ TRUSS?

★★★

The Other Palace

THE LAST DAYS OF LIZ TRUSS?

The Other Palace

★★★

“An entertaining and occasionally sharp piece of political theatre”