Miriam Trujillo
The ominous music enveloping the set of “4 girls the first letter E” before the show began, contrasted sharply with the opening scene. Four girls burst through the audience singing and dancing, eager to play a computer game they all adored. The quips and antics of the girls as they played their game, messed around, and quarreled with each other had the audience laughing. Yet, the sinister undertones that came to dominate the show were there from the beginning. The girl’s aren’t merely “messing around,” they are shoplifting. They aren’t quarreling about just anything: they are talking about the time they peer pressured each other into not eating, causing one of the girls to faint. Slowly, we start to see that something is very wrong in this friend group.
The girls gather around the computer and the graphics of the game flicker across the screen hung at the back of the stage. Slowly, the theatre is filled with images of hooded figures, bloodied birds, and the brooding darkness of the woods. Suddenly, one of the girls gets up and starts talking to “The King”, a character in the game, as if he were real. She talks like a solder receiving orders. Now we fully see what’s so wrong in this group: these girls are obsessed, mind, body, and soul with this dark game. They believe that the King is real and commands them. It’s clear that they are fixated on the King with the single-mindned passion that only a young girl has…and that their passion is going to end disastrously.
The story of 4 girls the first letter e is inspired by a crime that happened in the U.S.A. ten years ago. A group of three twelve-year old girls were fascinated by the internet character Slenderman. Two of the girls believed Slenderman was real; that he talked to them, commanded them, and would eventually reward them by taking them to live with him in his mansion. They decided that the best way to receive this reward was to sacrifice their third friend to Slenderman. They lured her to the woods and stabbed her nineteen times. She barely survived.
The violent climax to the girls’ obsession is approach slowly, casting its long shadow over the whole piece. For example, in the stark light of an interrogation room a neighbour recounts the horrific condition Esther was found in. We see the girls share trances and jump up to receive orders from “The King”. We see the girls play the game more and learn that the way to win involves stabbing and being stabbed. We watch as the girls start to isolate from each other, as Elise and Evie grow further from Emaline and Esther since those two aren’t “chosen”…
In what becomes a sweet, sad, sapphic, and one-sided love story we find the spirit that makes the show so compelling. In the real crime, the victim was a sacrifice: someone the two perpetrators wanted to throw away to gain their reward.
There’s no explicit violence, no screams, no bloodshed. Instead, we’re left aching over the fragile, tragic beauty of girlhood: over the intensity of friendship, first love, and imagination that can turn on a dime and become so dangerous.
Initially, I strongly disagreed with the choice to not portray the actual stabbing. The leadup to the crime was so perfectly written, and the scenes depicting the aftermath were so strong, that leaving out the climax itself felt like a gaping hole in an otherwise strongly structured narrative.
While I still hold that this is the case, I see how the omission of the act helps preserve the tone of the piece, which is not there to focus on the lurid crime. It’s there to show the boundless souls of the girls who suffered from the act, on both sides of the crime.
Showing the crime would have changed the tone of the piece dramatically. Nevertheless, I think the narrative structure suffered. I think it might have been a worthy choice to show some of the crime. Perhaps if we had seen the girls lure Esther into the woods, seen the glint of a knife, and captured the moment when Esther realized something was terribly wrong, the narrative structure wouldn’t have suffered so much and the tone would have remained intact.
Other, slight imperfections in the show’s writing and execution also detracted from the weight of the piece. In my opinion, one of the most difficult things an adult actor can do is authentically portray a child. The actors made a valiant effort to do this hard task, but the performances still just missed that elusive spirit that would have made them believable children. In addition, the plot point where the neighbour, an older male, sleeps with one of the girls while she is under the impression that he is the King, felt misplaced and unnecessary to the rest of the story. Lastly, I think the play might be a little bit difficult to follow if you are not familiar with the details of the real crime.
The show is far from perfect, but it did something that only real art can do. It created an atmosphere, a vision so intense and so specific that I, as an audience member, felt that call to try and understand a fragment of truth about being human. The souls of the girls felt real, and peering into them felt like a revelation.
The final scene broke my heart, haunted me for days and will linger with me long after the whole Fringe is over.
Recommended Drink: A glass of rosé. Sparkling, pink… girlish? But something that still can go to your head.
Catch 4 girls the first letter e at Greenside at George St, venue 236 in Lime Studio at 21:55 from now until the 25th (not the 18th). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Box Office.
Jake Mace
Phoebe Bakker
