REVIEW: Rip Her To Shreds, Haston House, EdFringe 2026 ★★★

The power of three sometimes doesn’t set you free. Rip Her To Shreds is a wickedly witchy, Y2K, gloriously gnarly descent into girlhood. When boys let you down, all you need is a girl’s night.

Reeling from being dumped by her boyfriend, HBIC Beth and her chaotic roommates Mercy and Bo let their obsessions spiral them into feral rivalry.

Deeply inspired by the world and characters of Miller’s The Crucible, Rip Her to Shreds is an intimate, bedroom gathering of girlies in Salem, gossiping and scheming, directed by the otherworldly, sharp eye of Miranda Haymon.

I don’t reckon any scenes passed the Bechdel test, maybe when Bo is passing her petition about, however at its core the play truly asks, what does it mean to be a real wild woman? There are so many systemic issues at play, from patriarchal desire to combatting internalised madonna-whore complexes which builds a devastatingly funny yet devastatingly true theatrical viewing.

As you saunter into the playing space, the mess, the camaraderie, feels deeply familiar,  like every girl’s room after getting ready with Amelia Dent’s costuming giving a real 2000s feel. 

Every performer commits fully, lively and impossible to look away from. Crazed Mercy, played by Isabelle Barbier, gives such energy of weaponised incompetence, casually abusive,  proper messy girl energy, with remnants of glitter remaining from the previous night. She’s a complicated character, and Barbier lets us see exact moments where Mercy’s ethical boundaries were crossed. Mia Ronn’s Beth had that deeply unhinged energy, with a motif of underestimated aggression, from chucking stuff about to slapping thick pink rope. Moments of deep care and reprieve are found with Bo, played by Spinks, forever affected by the loss of her mum.

The girls use bastardised rituals to further entrench their insecurities, from thunder thighs to flat hair, the rhythmic, hypnotising, spell-casting repetition layered over each other sows the rotten seeds of hatred. Mercy and Beth end up in a delusional, comparative echo chamber of slut shaming. Sometimes the layered energy of the lines felt too chaotic, but true to the world it was building. That vitriol and anger is felt in the fade into a slow red/pink wash, flickering as their bloodthirst reaches its peak of poor decisions. The imagery of Andrea Lopez Alvarez’s Abigail, curled onto the pink central rug and surrounded by the thick pink rope with a sharp spotlight, was uncomfortable to view.

Rip Her to Shreds is gut-punching, jaw-dropping and unnerving.

Recommended Drink: Bloody Mary.

Performances of Rip Her To Shreds have now concluded at EdFringe 2026.