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Showing posts with label Bella Heesom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bella Heesom. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating: 
Who could resist a title like Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself? Written by Bella Heesom (and performed by her and Sara Alexander) the show is about a woman's relationship with her genitals and finds its subject perched on the intersection of biological urges and societal pressure.
The basic structure is an (I assume) semi-autobiographical tale which begins with Heesom's earliest sexual awakenings and takes us to the present day, stopping off along the way at key moments that shaped her sexuality. That's overlaid with a dialogue between her brain and her clitoris, through which we observe how societal conditioning has messed up her capacity to experience true pleasure.
The show wears its heart on its sleeve, at times preaching directly to the audience about feminine empowerment, anger at patriarchal expectations and an often incandescent sense of fury that the centre of a woman's sexual pleasure is stigmatised, mocked and belittled. The rear of the stage is taken up by a gradually evolving projection that sums up the status quo they're battling against, showing slogans like "Female Genitals are Gross", "You Are A Sex Object" and "The Female Orgasm Is A Bonus"
The show is aimed squarely at cis women (at straight Western cis women if you wanted to get precise), with the majority female audience cheering and clapping at the more insightful lines of dialogue. But, and I cannot stress this enough, Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva... is so good that audiences of all genders and sexual preferences can and should check this out.
The quality of the writing is superb, the structure of the show is tuned to perfection, the production values are well above average. Best of all, it's absolutely hilarious. Heesom's cerebral and nervy character is in a classic straight-man/comic partnership with Alexander's innocently and (adorably) upbeat clitoris. The show is funny to a level that the pair often have to wait for the audience to finish laughing before they continue - always a good sign.
Beyond the laughs, the show has an emotional core which transcends a simple polemic against the miseries of the patriarchy and becomes something more universally uplifting. I don't want to diminish the show's laser-precise focus on female sexuality, but no matter who you are you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel a rush of emotions at the show's remarkable climactic scenes.
These theoretically are sex-positive times. Open a glossy lifestyle magazine or Sunday broadsheet and you're likely to find columnists espousing sexual freedom and female emancipation. But though things are undeniably an improvement on the past, there's still a huge culture of prudishness and shame caked on top of the ways we approach sex and specifically female genitalia - I mean, why is a "cunt" the absolute worst thing you can call someone?
Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva... (and other similarly inclined cultural objects) are gradually chipping away at all this. Late in the show, the title is explained: it's a line from a poem about 4000-year-old Mesopotamian sex goddess Inanna, whose vulva was widely revered as a holy place. It's a story reminds us that the stigma we see all around us isn't inevitable. Changes like this don't happen overnight, but this production is contributing to a slow shift in perception for the better.
Perhaps there's an argument that shows like this are preaching to the converted. Judging from the audience when I was there, people attending this will be politically switched on and smart women. The people actively promoting the status quo wouldn't go near a fringe show with a name like Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself in a million years. But, Heesom argues that women must not just defeat the misogynist leering at them from a building site, they must also evict the one society has lodged in their own heads.
I had a great time. Heesom is a genuinely insightful writer (I similarly enjoyed her previous show My World Has Exploded A Little Bit), her partnership with Sara Alexander fizzes with comic chemistry and Donnacadh O’Briain’s direction is fantastic. It's the full package and is a show destined to go far.
Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself is at Ovalhouse until 25 May. Tickets here.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
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Last night I looked a woman in the eyes and told her she was going to die. She looked right back at me and told me the same. It was disconcerting: you compartmentalise mortality and death deep down inside - sure, at that at some day you're going to die, but dwelling on it isn't particularly healthy. But My World Has Exploded A Little Bit thumps death down on an autopsy table and spills its guts, picking through bereavement, loss and grief.
The tone varies from sentimental miserablism to blunt honesty with stop offs on the way at anger and joy. This is the brainchild of Bella Heesom, who previously impressed in last September's The Woman in the Moon. Beginning as a practical guide to bereavement, she gradually switches gears and ends up at painful self-appraisal. Throughout she's assisted by Esh Alladi, who plays a piano accompaniment and provides comic relief.
The underlying narrative chronicles two deaths. The first is a daughter struggling to cope with her father's fatal illness. Having been diagnosed with an aggressively malignant brain tumour things are gradually winding down, and the daughter explains the stages by which you cope with care, planning and emotional reinforcement. Next up her mother dies, and we repeat the stages, now shot through with a faint anger and guilt.
First impressions are worrying. The prose used to describe the daughter's reactions is syrupy and laden with clunking similes. This, in combination with a manipulative 'okay, cry now' piano score left me primed for a sickly dose of grief porn. Fortunately, the show quickly demonstrates a nimble self-awareness that allows the tone to vary wildly while maintaining a narrative and thematic throughline. Contrasting emotions clash up against one another: moments of deeply felt misery pricked by a comic flourish or upbeat bit of narration.
This gives My World Has Exploded A Little Bit a powerful core, especially as we quickly realise that the 'case studies' we're exploring are obviously derived from Heesom's own experience. Ordinarily I'm deeply suspicious of performers using their shows as a form of therapy. This brand of drama tends towards the narcissistic, treating the audience as distractions along for the ride on someone's personal growth. But though the show is obviously therapeutic for Heesom, it's also a worthwhile piece of drama in its own right.
This is almost entirely down to Heesom's performance - it hits like a freight train. To devise a piece of theatre around your parent's deaths is either bold or foolish - transforming moments of intense pain into something to entertain a bunch of anonymous strangers. But Heesom gradually peels back all the layers of artifice, arriving at a white hot ball of confusion, anger and self-loathing, which explodes in a climax that's spinetingling in its raw honesty.
That said, there's a few flies in the ointment. Esh Alladi grates as the comic relief, his performance a man-childish set of ingratiating grins and clownish waves. I get that for this to work you've got to have a little sugar mixed in with the salt, but his mugging quickly becomes an annoying distraction. He's not exactly helped by the task of tunelessly thumping a keyboard to mark scene changes. I don't know if it's a volume issue, or something to do with the mixing desk, but the sound ran through me like nails down a blackboard.
This aside, My World Has Exploded A Little Bit is an undeniably powerful piece of theatre. Death is an incredibly weightier subjects to tackle, but Heesom approaches it with a perceptive, clear-eyed intelligence. All around me audience members were sniffling and dabbing their eyes - their reaction not caused by sentimental manipulation, but by hard-earned, keenly felt pathos.
Not exactly a cheery night out, but nonetheless an extremely rewarding one.
★★★★
My World Has Exploded A Little Bit is at Tristan Bates Theatre until 15 August. Tickets here.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Thursday, September 25, 2014
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The last thing you expect an Elizabethan comedy to be is funny. Don't get me wrong, Shakespeare, Marlowe and the gang have their moments of mirth, but it's safe to say modern audiences don't exactly bust a gut at their gags. So when invited to John Lyly's 'astrological sex comedy' The Woman in the Moon, I figured I was in for the sort of comedy you intellectually appreciate more than feel. Oh boy, was I ever wrong.
Lyly spent 60 years as the best-selling author of fiction in Britain, trumping even the mighty Bard as a 16th-century literary success. Contemporaneous accounts paint him as a Wilde-ish bon vivant; a well-dressed, sharp-tongued man with a bevy of vices. He even flirted with Elizabeth I, cheekily flitting in and out of favour with the court. Aside from his dramatic successes he was also elected as an MP four times, no mean feat for a man frequently accused of witchcraft, often embroiled in religious controversies, whose plays were banned and theatres forcibly shut down. He eventually died "poor and neglected"; a description you can also apply to his plays. Only one of his phrases has entered common parlance - "All is fair in love and war" - which somehow feels appropriate.
But now he's back! And where better to resurrect this forgotten hero of Elizabethan theatre than The Rose? Dredged up from under the London clay and nestled under skyscraper girders, the theatre is half-performance space and half-archaeological dig, quite rightly described as "one of the weirdest sights in London". The perfect place for a seriously weird play.
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| Julia Sandford as Nature |
The Woman in the Moon is set in a mythological world populated by personifications of astrological signs. The opening scene sees Nature (Julia Sandiford) embarking on her greatest creation yet: Woman. She's named Pandora (Bella Heesom), animated by the breath of the gods, given the best aspects of the planets, coaxed into movement and finally granted voice. Four boyish shepherds, Stesias (Joel Davey), Learchus (Rhys Bevan), Iphicles (James Askill) and Melos (Robert Heard), watch this process with barely concealed adolescent lust. With no women around they're a fidgety, nervous bunch, eager to get their paws on this fascinating new creature. This proves more difficult than anticipated.
Enter the planets. Unhappy that Pandora has nabbed all of their best qualities, they take it in turns to afflict her with their various temperaments, trying to win her over to their side once and for all. So, while Pandora is influenced by Saturn (Llywelyn ab Eleri) she's grumpy, while Mars (Adam Cunis) stands to attention she's violent and combative, Jupiter (Gareth Radcliffe) makes her imperious, Venus (Keira Duffy) makes her horny and so on. Director James Wallace gives the piece a very Jodorowsky-esque focus, reminding me of an extremely similar astrological procession in 1973 underground classic The Holy Mountain.
Like a wheel of fortune Pandora's personality spins out of control, and her interactions with the shepherds grow ever more tangled and surreal. Over the course of the play these men are variously abused, domineered, seduced, confused, manipulated and nursed by Pandora. They tie themselves into knots as they battle for the affections of a woman who, by the time curtain falls, has embodied every single aspect of womanhood.
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| The shepherds. |
This is all performed by one of the most consistently funny casts I've seen of late. The shepherds make a great comedy troupe, scuffling around the stage in a bewildered romantic daze. As they vie for Pandora's affections they gradually turn on each other, dopily plotting the best way to dispatch their rivals and get her all to themselves. Like Snow White's seven dwarves each shepherd embodies varying aspects of masculinity, though they're united in extreme gullibility.
The planets are similarly well cast and played, each performer loudly broadcasting their particular astrological bent. Highlights are Radcliffe's boastful, commanding, wheeler-dealer Jupiter, waving his phallic sceptre about. Similarly fun is the sleazy, fedora wearing Mercury (Théo Kingshott), theatrically posing like one of a ridiculous professional poker stars. My absolute favourite was Duffy's powerfully erotic, bright green Venus. Visually styled after Fame-era Lady Gaga with a hint of Rihanna for good measure, she and Heesom writhe serpentlike to the throbbing electro-beat of Goldfrapp's Ooh La La.
The centrepiece performance is Heesom's chameleonic Pandora. She switches personalities like she's shuffling a deck of cards, one moment an intimidating kicker of asses, the next trapped in a hallucinatory wig-out, the next mumsy and caring. It's scarily good how strong Heesom's grip on this character is, and most importantly, even through a dizzying temperamental blizzard, the bedrock of her disposition remains stable, allowing for character development beyond the superficial planetary changes.
Lyly's play is written as a satire on womanhood, concluding with a masculine shrug that women are ultimately chaotic, capricious creatures. In rougher hands this material would have left an unpleasantly misogynistic taste in the mouth, yet this production avoids that pitfall by poking fun at both sexes equally, presenting the whole damn human condition as a sexed-up, sweaty knot of misunderstandings propelled by hormones, libidos and jealousy, all gazed upon by a mischievous universe.
The Woman in the Moon is hilarious, sexy and perhaps most surprisingly, cool. The writing is pin-sharp, the dialogue delivered naturalistically and with personality; notably I had no trouble following the dense Elizabethan wordplay even through frequent bouts of giggles. The costuming is similarly spot-on, everyone dressed with one eye on fashion and the other on character - the planets' monochromatic costumes particularly impressive.
The Woman in the Moon fits The Rose like a glove, the carcass of the old theatre raucously reanimated by Lyly's wonderful play. This is the first professional run of this play for 400 years, but by the stars it's been worth the wait.
The Woman in the Moon is at the Rose Theatre until 4th October 2014
Thanks to Views From the Gods for the ticket. This review is also posted there.
Thanks to Views From the Gods for the ticket. This review is also posted there.
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