The Guardian 2 May 2022

Last time around it was called The Afflicted and enjoyed a run at the 2019 Edinburgh fringe. Now the Groupwork show has been rebooted as The Hope River Girls and is looking bold and confident as it twirls its way towards the Edinburgh international children’s festival. There, it should entrance not only its target teenage market but anyone with a taste for off-centre dance theatre.

In a fictionalised version of a real incident, the setting is upstate New York where, in 2012, a case breaks out of mass psychogenic illness. Without obvious cause or connection, 24 girls in a rust-belt school are beset by a disorder that causes them to dance uncontrollably. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).