REVIEW: The Girl in The Mask at The White Bear Theatre 6 – 17 October 2026
‘The Girl in The Mask has plenty going for it but needs a rethink.’ ★★ ½
It's not always easy getting on with your parents when you're an angsty teenager left with no other victims for all that pent up rage. Most of us grow out of it but in some situations – often exacerbated by a difficult parental figure – a nasty split can grow between parent and child. Welcome, The Girl in The Mask to the Kennington pub stage where we witness how a daughter posting about her ‘abusive’ mother on social media whilst wearing a mask tears the whole family apart.
It could have been an excellent tragicomedy. Despite a dreary start with Celia (Laura Fitzpatric) shedding tears over her husband’s coffin, daughter Amy/Eddie (Emma Riches) switches on the play’s comic beats with her Iron Maiden album turned all the way in the adjacent bedroom. Amy finally enters and almost moping, asks if she can get inside the coffin whilst reminding her mother that before it was closed she dolled her father up in make-up. At its best, Brad Sutherland script fizzles with such black comedy, witty puns which punctuate the emotional disputes between the family nicely.
Yet, this near two hour long play drags in all the wrong places. By half way through the same (albeit escalating) arguments between mother and daughter had become tedious. Amy – who then renames herself Eddie after donning the mask and finally estranging herself from her mother – hangs around moping on the stage with little revealed about her inner workings. Even soppy and head-constantly-in-hands boyfriend Kieran (Edward Jobling) can’t tease a different flavour of character out of Amy’s continual temper tantrum. We learn later of Amy’s possible autism which provides the only explanation for the way that she acts, which is the point of the play.
Star-of-the-show is Aunty Jo (Samantha Parry) who is averse to physical touch, unable to hold eye contact and instead, bakes everyone cakes as the most well rendered character out of the whole lot. Parry performs her part with a cool ease dipping lightly into her past to reveal how she has struggled socially all her life. But the family scenes went round in loops despite her often ability to create comedy out of thin air.
The Girl in The Mask has plenty going for it but needs a rethink. It is too long to begin with, and the direction needs to manage the script better with tighter interactions between characters. It is with the times, describing the dangers of our media landscape to a T but it certainly needs more oomph.
The Girl in The Mask by Brad Sutherland at The White Bear Theatre 6 – 17 October 2026
BOX OFFICE https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/the-girl-in-the-mask
Photography by Paddy Gormley
