Weather Girl Review: One-Woman Storm at Soho Theatre

Weather Girl – Soho Theatre until 5th April

Final chance to catch this one — the run ends this week and it’s sold out.

I recently caught a show that’s been causing a bit of a stir, all the way from the Edinburgh Fringe on a wave of rave reviews. It’s a one-person show which I am not normally a fan of, because if you don’t like who you’ve got, there’s nobody else coming on to liven up the evening!

I have a theory that there’s always a hint in the title! Here we have a Californian weather girl who’s going on a Prosecco-fuelled monologue about her job, climate change, her estranged mother, water shortages, her involvement with her producer, and is in full-on meltdown.

In just an hour’s running time it attempts to tackle all these themes. It is billed as a comedy and whilst there is some humour in it, it’s not a laugh riot. There are serious themes and towards the end it feels a bit like the classic film Network, with a call for action for us to divine water to solve the crisis. However, this is never made clear or fully realised – even with the “surprise” at the end.

It is overstuffed with ideas and whilst you admire the ambition, I think it ultimately needs more focus and time to breathe. I don’t think it needs to expand from its one-person origins and introduce the characters of her mother and boss that she describes. It just needs some judicious editing and focusing, and possibly extending the running time slightly.

As the eponymous weather girl, Julie McDermott is just fabulous. She is an absolute force of nature and rips through the dialogue like a force 10 gale. If it wasn’t enough for her to master the rapid-fire dialogue, she also has to juggle different technical aspects of the set – including microphones and lights. It is an overused phrase, but she is a tour de force and the play is worth seeing for her performance alone.

The producers are also behind Fleabag and Baby Reindeer, both of which started out at Edinburgh but have ended up in the West End and eventually on screen. I have suspicions that there are similar ambitions for this production beyond this run and format.

Cynical me thinks that this is all part of a development process, because lots of it will work much better on screen. The surreal elements, the parched California landscape, the car crashes that she describes – I think will work a lot better on screen. Tongue firmly in cheek, I suspect we will see it on Netflix in a few years’ time, either as a one-off movie or short series.

At the moment the run is sold out – but if it gets extended or if it transfers, it is most definitely worth seeing for Julie McDermott’s performance alone – and possibly for the “I saw it first” bragging rights!

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