Acclaimed Queer, Equine, Comedy, Fantasia, All the Fraudulent Horse Girls Returns for Limited Season Jan 10, 12, 13 at The Glory
Brooklyn Rep and The Glory has announced a three-performance return of All the Fraudulent Horse Girls, a new campy Australian one- act comedy by Michael Louis Kennedy running January 10, 12 and 13 at 20:00 at The Glory in Haggerston.
The original cast returns for this limited season. East London Cabaret Drag royalty Cazeleōn is Audrey 1, Beth Graham as Audrey 2, Alice Morgan-Richards (Alice’s Adventures Underground) as Audrey 3 with Georgia Leila Stoller & Rachel Blaquière as the Horse Girls. The creative team is Lili Fuller (designer), Matthew Bovee (Movement), Rachel Blaquière (Music), and Tias Volker (Lighting).
Horse Girls… is about Audrey, an 11-year-old in suburban Sydney who loves horses so much that she can recite every line of the movie Spirit, she loves horses so much she has a shetland pony asthma puffer, she loves them so much she can telepathically communicate with all the other horse girls in the world. Bullied by the only other horse girls in the school, she sets about proving her worth to her classmates by liberating a police horse, setting off an odyssey through time and space.
Met with rapturous cheers, glowing reviews, and an OFFIE commendation for the October run, the show is coming back for three performances and ”perhaps more pop-ups at the famed venue as the year goes on.” Directed by Charles Quittner, the show immersively utilizes the East London Queer institution, The Glory, like never before. And stick around after the play for the Horse Girl Cabaret, a short variety show with horses on the brain.
Speaking to the conception of the work, Kennedy states: “It was born of a fascination I have with the concept of ‘Horse Girls’; a demographic of young women whose passion for all things equine alienates them from their less hyper fixated peers. I also had recently read a lot of Cormac McCarthy’s Western Americana novels and found myself amused by the hyper-seriousness of the masculine frontier mythology they hold. If those two thoughts were part of a venn diagram the intersection was horses and loneliness.”
It is, at its heart, a play about loneliness and neurodivergency. It is a piece of monologue theatre told from the perspective of a young, neurodivergent girl whose passion for horses and horse-adjacent things is so all-consuming it becomes the primary barrier to making friends. In this way she is the ubiquitous ‘weird child’ whose niche interest both sustains and alienates them. It is about the pain of being misunderstood, and the struggle for connection and community.
It is a wild and unruly pastiche of equine references, preteen cringecore, suburban Australiana, and abstract Americana, using elements of monologue, artful panto and contemporary dance. Think The Saddle Club, Spirit, The Neverending Story, H2O Just Add Water, Blue Water High, National Velvet, Black Beauty, Motorola Razers, scooby bracelets, Soviet Constructivism, Spaghetti Westerns, the chaotic costume styling of The Disney Channel, The Brady Bunch, Tarsem Singh’s The Fall, Peter Greenaway’s The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover, and Brian De Palma’s Carrie.
All the Fraudulent Horse Girls runs January 10, 12, 13 at 20:00 in The Glory (281 Kingsland Rd, London E2 8AS). Tickets are available on Outsavvy 15￡ with ten 10￡ early koala tickets for each performance. https://www.outsavvy.com/event/11237/all-the-fraudulent-horse-girls
The show was first developed as part of the Fresh Ink program for emerging writers facilitated by Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP), and received a development showing as part of Glasgow’s Queer Theory.
Born from the basements, rooftops, and backyards, Brooklyn Rep presents colorful new theatrical happenings in communal spaces. With artistic direction by Charles Quittner, expect UK premieres from off-off artists around the world. Up next is Scritches: an evening of new short plays by exciting American writers making their London debuts including Daphne Always, Ty Defoe, Sam Mueller Matthew Minnicino and Charlie O’Leary. The writers will be paired with London-based directors Beth Graham, Freddie Love, Charles Quittner, Aiden Strickland, and India Wilson through a very cute matchmaking process in collaboration with Museum of the Home. Catch it Feb 19/20 at The Glory. Follow @bkrepuk.
YASS Magazine 