Theatre (new writing, comedy)
Assembly George Square Studios (Venue 17) 13:30 1 hour. Suitability: 14+ (Guideline)Group: Viscera Theatre
Modern girls! Just what are they like? Roxy and Alys are chilling at a Festival after graduating, it is August 2010, we can assume they are twenty-one years old.
Keep this in mind, age is a running conceit (and sore) during the sixty minute passage of their seven ages of womanhood (more or less).
Existential identity crises both figurative and literally plot out their future lives with bizarre role-play juxtaposition, cocking regular snooks at the ‘fourth wall’ convention and contriving to subvert character identity by exploiting a flip-chart to represent Brechtian alienation. It is all about revealing the creative process to externalise the internal workings of the show. Apparently.
Timeshifts and surreal transitions abound as both characters continually swap identities as the inevitable course of Fate drags them ever nearer to the apocalyptic thirty threshold pariah status of childless singleton, writer’s block novelist and career car crash chef. Note – by this point you should be reduced to a pant-wetting giddy giggle wreck.
They really should not have gone to that Festival Fortune Teller, but they did and by a convenient stage device of, well they just unfold the flip-chart and back they are in 2010 again.
By now, J.B. Priestley’s reputation for para-dimensional time-slips is rapidly unraveling like a Möbius striptease act at a Doctor Who convention. Mean whilst, Brecht is having an identity crisis but not with his own. ‘Doomed from the womb’ seems their destiny’s childless nemesis. Bridget Christie is their feminist role model aspiration but reality immerses them in Bridget Jones’ tortured insecurities – just what is a girl to do with her alternative universe lives?
Blowing wind in the face of caution Alys and Roxy are determined to use their roaring twenties to grab the bull by the horn. Try anything once is their motto. Picture the mythical Ouroboros snake that forever consumes its own tail. If it helps.
For goodness sake, how long is adolescence supposed to last? There are one or two ‘adult’ moments that may cause your maiden aunt to blush (or sigh with bitter frustration). Maxed-out and giddily ephemeral there is crafted rhythm method in their madness. See this show – it is what you have been saving yourself for.
ps. The two hens in a boat image may have all sorts of Jungian symbolism but it doesn’t really work, unlike the cast who will have to until their mid eighties to pay off their student loans – now there’s dramatic irony! And there is a tent on stage – on purpose. Perhaps they just confused Beckett’s Happy Days with The Fonz.
Desperately recommended!
