La Merda (The Shit) revived at Summerhall is a memorable and moving one woman show, told with passion and panache by the emotionally and literally naked Silvia Gallerano.
On one level it’s a high octane critique of a woman’s lot in post-Berlusconi Italy, but it’s also a universal howl of despair for the state of female mental health in our highly sexualised, highly abusive, dangerously ‘beauty’ and fame fixated culture.
The writing is a stream of consciousness of remarkable intensity, played with supreme naturalism by Gallerano (considering that she is perched, exhibit like, on a platform in an atomy lecture theatre); the face is that of a tortured and quixotic clown, compelling and mesmerising, the voice a slurred and damaged drawl, thrilling and dangerous, the body an artist’s model, exposed as a Lucien Freud.
This is theatre at the edge and at its best, brave, innovative, hard hitting and compelling.
Five stars
Submitted by Ade Morris
