By Grace Hatchell
Good For Her! returns to London at The Other Palace this July, bringing a sharp, darkly funny solo show that tackles comparison culture, ambition, and the pressures placed on women in a social media-driven world.
Now this… this is exactly the sort of thing that makes me stop mid-delivery and have a proper nosy before I carry on.
Good For Her! is heading back to London this July, settling into The Other Palace after a critically acclaimed run at Theatre503, and from what I’ve gathered peeking into this one, it’s not here to behave itself.
Written and performed by Mollie Semple, it’s described as a darkly funny gut-punch about ambition, womanhood, and what happens when you start building your life based on everyone else’s version of success rather than your own. And I’ll be honest with you… that already feels a little too close to home for comfort.
We follow Iris, who is trying—exhaustingly—to keep all the plates spinning. There’s ambition, there’s envy, there’s that constant performance of “having it all together,” which, if you’ve ever scrolled through your phone and immediately questioned your entire life, you’ll recognise straight away.
But it doesn’t stop there. Because while Iris is busy comparing herself to a former schoolmate who seems to have absolutely nailed life, she’s also caring for her narcissistic mother as her health declines. And somewhere between the doomscrolling, the pressure, and the quiet panic, her reality starts to bend and shift until she’s heading towards a confrontation she can’t dodge forever.
And that’s the bit I find fascinating. Because this isn’t just a story about ambition—it’s about the cost of it. About how much of yourself you’re expected to give away just to feel like you’ve earned a place at the table. It’s a question a lot of women are taught not to ask out loud… which probably means it’s exactly the right question to be asking on stage.
Directed by Kayla Stokes, the production uses multimedia to blur the lines between digital life and real life, which feels very now. Instagram perfection colliding with messy reality, inner thoughts spilling out, memory and performance all tangled together. It’s that strange space where everything looks polished on the surface, but underneath… it’s absolute chaos.
Voices featured in the production include Jaquetta May as Iris’s mum, alongside Al Nash, Zoe Maltby, Jordan Stratton and Sam Morris, building a world around Iris that feels crowded, noisy, and perhaps a little overwhelming—just like the one she’s trying to navigate.
Mollie Semple herself has said the play came from a desire to create a deeply flawed character that audiences could still side with, and I quite like that. Because perfect characters are all very well, but they’re not much use to us, are they? It’s the messy ones—the ones who say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing, feel the wrong thing—that we recognise.
And if I’m being completely honest (and I usually am, whether people ask for it or not), there’s something slightly uncomfortable about the idea that Iris might reflect parts of ourselves we’d rather not look at too closely. That little flicker of comparison. That quiet tallying up of who’s doing better, who’s further ahead, who seems to have it all sorted. It’s not pretty, but it’s real.
The show runs from Tuesday 21st to Sunday 26th July 2026 at The Other Palace Studio, with a press night on Wednesday 22nd July at 7pm, and a running time of 75 minutes. It’s recommended for ages 13+, with content warnings including themes of violence, body image, bodily fluids, and references to sexual violence—so this is very much one that leans into the uncomfortable as well as the funny.
For me, this feels like one of those shows that doesn’t just want to entertain you—it wants to poke at you a bit. Nudge you. Maybe even call you out, just a little. And sometimes, those are the shows that stick the longest.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this one as it lands back in London, because anything that turns comparison culture into live chaos sounds like it might have a few things to say… and I’m always curious to hear what spills out when the chaos finally gets its moment on stage.
Good For Her! – The Other Palace Theatre
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