You can see why Jack McNamara was drawn to this all-girl tale of a teenage punk band for his debut production as artistic director of Newcastle’s Live theatre. Here was a chance to put young north-eastern actors on the stage, champion local playwright Rebecca Glendenning and appeal to a crowd who like the taste of scuzzy rock’n’roll with their theatre.
In at least some of those aspects, We Are the Best! succeeds. On Lily Arnold’s wooden skate-park of a set, calling out to be clambered over and slid down, the central trio played by Bridget Marumo, Bethany Morris and Elena Porter bring an amiable energy to a jokey script that keeps the mood light and punkishly throwaway.
There are lively performances too from Beruce Khan, as a down-with-the-kids youth club leader, Stacey Ghent, as a humourless teacher compering the school talent show, and Anna Bolton, as a midlife-crisis mum.
On paper, it could have had the tearaway subversiveness of Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, the Lee Hall adaptation of Alan Warner’s The Sopranos, co-produced by Live theatre in 2015. Or it could have had the girl-power swagger of the Channel 4 drama We Are Lady Parts.
What it shouldn’t have been is inconsequential. Yet scene after scene of We Are the Best! skips by with nothing at stake and nothing to be resolved. I’m not saying it is slow, but it takes the whole first half for the band to get a guitar. All that raises the temperature after the interval is a squabble over a boy.
The source material is Lukas Moodysson’s 2013 movie of the same name, adapted from the graphic novel Never Goodnight by Coco Moodysson. Set in the Sweden of 1982, when even fans of Patti Smith must admit a sneaking respect for Abba’s Voulez-Vous, it is about a band of 13-year-olds who have mastered their instruments enough to produce one song, a petulant thrash called Sports Are Shit.
But whatever insight the original had into adolescent resourcefulness, coming-of-age angst and fraught parental relationships drifts on stage into scenes of moping and vague introspection. It ends up as the story of three girls who overcome almost no obstacles to play a gig – and it takes more than that to make a play.
We Are the Best! is at Live theatre, Newcastle, until 18 June.
