Green Room
Thursday 17th April
This performance did not get off to a great start. The first of the three performances that made up the evening, Krissi Musiol’s Making a Big Deal, was presumably making some kind of ‘hilarious’ allusion to the perils of gambling. As she wandered on dressed as a roulette wheel with her alter-ego ‘Tina Turner’, it seemed as though she was trying a little too hard to get her point across. We get it, gambling addiction is bad. Just ask Jeremy Kyle.
Chris Fitzsimmons’ piece (a term he professes to despise, Piece of what? Cake? Pie?) was better. Funny, unpretentious and self-deprecating, it was a surrealist semi-autobiographical tale of his life and foreseen death. (In case you’re wondering, he envisages he’ll be murdered by a miniature Dalek by his borderline insane mother.) He also finished with a song, something I usually detest but here it worked pretty well.
The best by far though was Nic Green’s Trilogy: Part One, a project born from a want to understand the issues that many woman have with their own bodies. Green started the proceedings with a ridiculously energetic dance around the stage, followed by her fellow performer Laura Bradshaw. They both started to chant “Lamb kebab, chicken kebab” and I wondered whether I’d been given the wrong programme by mistake. It soon became clearer as they screamed “It’s not called a kebab, it’s called a vagina!”
Within minutes, both performers were jumping around to Germaine Greer quotes. OK, I can feel you cringing. Yes, this had the potential of rapidly becoming a tacky feminist cliché but, as they said before they started, in many ways things haven’t altered since the 1970s. I’m sure most of you will agree that it’s not really a bad thing that we’re reminded every so often that female bodies are aestheticised. This is something society does to the point of making some women feeling ashamed of their own body, so yeah…why not make a point of it?
The grand finale saw masses of women of all shapes and sizes finishing with a naked dance. I felt so proud of my lady lumps by the end I went straight home to eat lots of cheese.
9/10
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