REVIEW: LOOKING FOR GIANTS at The King’s Head Theatre 14 - 27 January 2025

'Cesca Echlin’s script is neurotic, intricate and beautiful ★★★★

‘Looking for Giants’ is a one-woman show following the narrator’s relationships with three men who have become like giants in her mind, swelling and inflating so that her idea of them bears little resemblance to reality. Although the men - a university tutor, an older man on a dating app and a teenage crush - are rhapsodised about by the narrator, who in obsessive monologues unpicks every slight interaction, this is not a show about men, but rather the mythical beasts men become in the narrator’s mind. 

Abby McCann is wonderful as the play’s unnamed narrator, delivering an assured performance which brings levity and humour along with moments of darkness. Even when describing feelings of helplessness and submission, McCann is fully in control of the room, holding the audience’s attention throughout the show’s run time, always an impressive feat in the endurance game of the one-person show. Her use of facial expressions and movements enhance the script, slipping effortlessly between the character of the narrator and the male objects of her desire, often to comedic effect. McCann’s performance highlights the agency of the narrator in her obsessions, transforming female hunger from something shameful to something genuinely thrilling. 

Cesca Echlin’s script is neurotic, intricate and beautiful, piles of shiny sentences spooling out and unravelling as the narrator digs obsessively into the meaning behind her male interests’ actions. The flickering power imbalances, particularly in the relationship between the narrator and the tutor, have something Sally Rooney-ish in them, while the themes of limerence and the subjectivity in erotic feeling reflect works of Chris Kraus and Anne Carson. In general, the writing is clear and confident — while it occasionally dips into slightly frilly and over-long descriptive passages, these suit the narrator’s looping fantastical worldview, and don't overly disrupt the otherwise tight and engaging storytelling. The second part of the play, following the narrator’s conversations on a dating app with an older man, is the strongest portion of writing, turning the mundanity of dating app interactions into an epic of biblical proportions. Unfortunately, the final part of the show is also the weakest, with the writing slightly losing the crystal clear arc of the first two parts and occasionally veering into confusion, although the final monologue is a return to form, celebrating the rapturous solipsism of girlhood, and joyfully reframing longing as an empowering act. 

The lighting, designed by Skylar Turnbull Hurd, makes up the entire set, gorgeously wrapping around McCann and providing the landscape of her desires, dreamy but formless and intangible. This is strikingly effective in the open space of the King’s Head’s main auditorium, bathing the theatre alternately in smokey purple, searing white or golden light, filling the space with the grandeur of the narrator’s obsessions. This effect is heightened by the sound designer Sarah Spencer’s evocative soundscape, which whispers, creaks and scrapes along with the narrator’s storytelling before swelling up to a screeching intensity as her fantasies reach fever pitch. 

‘Looking for Giants’ works as a paean to overthinking which is both fresh and relatable, with a strong central performance and elegant sound and lighting design. The writing dances in the ambiguous while remaining genuinely human and funny, culminating in a startling and invigorating thesis of female limerence executed almost perfectly. 

Photography: WoodForge Studios

Looking for Giants at the King’s Head Theatre 14 - 27 January 2025 

Writer/Director Cesca Echlin 

That What’s Wild theatre company 

Box office: https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/looking-for-giants