EDINBURGH 2026 Review: RIP HER TO SHREDS, Underbelly Cowgate
Runs until 30 August.
Some plays feel like direct responses to other, more famous, more accomplished plays. There’s a lot of John Proctor Is The Villain in Rip Her To Shreds, but we’re not entirely sure we mean it in a good way. Like Kimberly Belflower’s, Isabelle Barbier’s drama deals with female rage and social pressure while winking blatantly at The Crucible. Unfortunately, at this stage, hers is too messy, chaotic, loud, superficial, and immature to be of any consequence.
We meet three college roommates in Salem. Beth is about to get royally dumped by the love of her life; Mercy clearly has a variety of addictions that she can’t control; and Bo is the circumstantial orphaned loser whose mum was a witch. The piece has its moments. The excessive, exhilarating girlhood experience is joyous and galvanising, but the loudness, shrill reactions, and generalised OTT quality of the production grow old very quickly.
The direction emphasises their different types of femininity, doubling down on the acceptability of all of them, but continuously pitting them against each other. Cruelty comes easily to them, and everyone besides Bo has an incredibly mean streak. They body-shame, name-call, and backstab. Their dynamic is predictably formulaic and the genre instantly slides into that very American brand of comedy that’s forcibly imbued with societal observation.
Exasperating and unruly situational humour grows into nonsensical twists that bring it towards its darker objective. The project is about everything and nothing. Setting it in a very Y2K-early-2000s time period gives it a nostalgic aura, but doesn’t save a story that’s too disorderly in what it tries to do and say. Its logical junctures need more attention, as does the writing. All in all, the concept is intriguing, but it needs more work.
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