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The Girl Who Jumped Off the Hollywood Sign, Assembly George Square Studios, review

August 16, 2018

The Girl Who Jumped Off the Hollywood Sign’s well-researched script demonstrates Hartstone’s genuine fascination with Hollywood’s Golden Age, but fails to reverberate with the audience in a way she likely intends.

Joanne Hartstone’s one-woman The Girl Who Jumped Off the Hollywood Sign is an ode both to the old Hollywood divas, and those girls and women who never realised that dream. Although a well-researched script shows Hartstone’s unfeigned fascination with Hollywood’s Golden Age, the show’s not quite as engaging for the audience (even the big fans of Jean Harlow, Judy Garland and the rest) as the period clearly is for her.

Evie Edwards (Hartstone) is a hopeful actress that’ll take on any job in LA to get a chance of auditioning for a film role. However, as she gets closer and closer to the industry, she finds Hollywood to be anything but kind and welcoming to actresses. It is dominated by rich men who view actresses as sexual objects and will pressure them to risk their health just to fulfil their sexual fantasies – a reality still, of course, in existence today.

The Girl Who Jumped Off the Hollywood Sign’s topical script suffers somewhat from the character at its heart necessarily having to be portrayed as a little ‘mediocre’, or unremarkable, for the plot to make sense. Evie Edwards is told by the leading motion picture mogul that she ‘does not have the star personality’ – and Hartstone, likely on purpose, portrays the part somewhat true to that sentiment. Her Evie is wholly believable as a regular small-town girl with huge ambitions but an average talent. But at the same time, seeing only that – from the only character in the one-woman show – restricts the audience from really engaging after a while.

So whilst The Girl Who Jumped Off the Hollywood Sign tells an important story – and a real one at that, it’s based on multiple real-life examples of women who died for and because of Hollywood – their stories perhaps deserve to be told in a more dynamic and engaging way. Joanne Hartstone’s a talented writer but has here written a character for herself who doesn’t quite have the charm or ‘star-quality’ to connect with her audience.

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Žad Novak
Žad Novak is currently studying Comparative Literature and German at the University of Glasgow, with Theatre Studies as her additional subject. When not at university, she volunteers/works as an assistant (to the) director in professional theatres in Zagreb, Glasgow and Berlin. Her passion lies in brining theatre, literature and film from non-English-speaking countries into the spotlight, believing that exposing people to artworks from other places helps battle inequality and xenophobia. She is one of the founders of Glasgow International Student Theatre, a theatre society at University of Glasgow aiming to stage translated plays from around the world. Nevertheless, none of this is to say that she cannot enjoy a good production of Shakespeare. She is deeply, deeply grateful to all the amazing baristas across Edinburgh, the unsung heroes that make her Fringe-Binge possible! When she is not involved in making theatre, she loves to talk about past productions, and complains about missing ‘the theatre life’. Recently, she has found relief in writing reviews. Her family and friends are grateful.

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