[WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD.]
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I heard Scotch’n’Soda was producing a play called “Horse Girls,” but I was really curious to see what it was about, so here I am.
To provide some context, the production follows the lives of six girls — Ashleigh, Tiffany, Margaret, Brandi, Camille, and Robin — and their pathological obsession with horses. Together, they form the Lady Jean Ladies, a sort of equestrian club through which their love of horses is manifested.
Everything they enjoy is in some way related to horses. The boys they like ride horses. Their role model is Ann Romney, the wife of 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney and a fellow horse enthusiast — and, in this play, the first lady of the U.S. They seek to attend equestrian summer camps and dream of winning equestrian competitions. If they are sad, they know they can always rely on their horses. They even casually gallop and make horse noises.
Ashleigh is the affluent, intimidating, jealous, and self-entitled leader of the group who often scolds the other girls and constantly reminds them that the horse stable they all admire belongs to her family. The other girls in the group willingly do whatever Ashleigh says, a dynamic that reminded me of the plastics from Mean Girls if the plastics were obsessed with horses instead of popularity and were secretly social outcasts.
The play begins during one of the group’s club meetings, a meeting to which Camille brings her cousin Trish. It is in this meeting that the girls discover Ashleigh’s horse stable is going to be sold and turned into a mall, while the horses are going to be slaughtered for meat … gross. The girls’ anxiety over the issue drives them to all sorts of shenanigans, from praying in the name of their horses to singing their club’s anthem to calling the White House and demanding to speak to Ann Romney. These scenes, though surreal, were hilariously entertaining.
But Ashleigh’s concern reveals a darker undertone in the story as her obsession with horses (and power) drives her to insanity and, ultimately, to commit murder — a turn I was not expecting. These scenes provided insight into how pressure, expectations, and competition can drive someone to madness.
It is evident that the girls seek acceptance throughout the play, and more specifically, acceptance from Ashleigh. So when Ashleigh loses influence over the group, she begins to question her position in society. Trish is the only character in the story who realizes that the girls’ behavior and Ashleigh’s control over the group borders on the unhealthy. She is a great parallel to how someone might feel if they found themselves meeting the Horse Girls in real life.
#ScotchnSodas #Horse #Girls #surreal #entertaining #Tartan
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