Leathal Indifference

Dim bedroom. Fan. Laundry basket. New carpet. Soft pillows and a dark balcony. 

The light travels across the room during the telling. Dawn through dusk. A heavily pregnant woman moves around stage spinnibg the stories together like a conversation we are a part of but don't contribute to. 

The telling is harrowing and connected. Stories of violence. Reema who married Ajay. The girl in the servo. The screaming girl next to the neighbour. The girl on the phone at work. Reema who broke out of the locked flat and told her story to strangers. Reema who told the neighbour of the beatings, the starvings, the rapes. Reema who escaped. But not really because this story starts in the coroner's court so we already know how it ends. 

It's heavy handed but impressive. 90min monologue that grips the audience tight. The communal gasp when we hear that a officer told Reema that Ajay was just texting to tell her   he still loved her. The palpable relief when PI Pee-wee looses his quarry. The slide of facts and truths into the narrative. Why women stay. How many we lose. What it costs financially. 

Leaving the theatre everyone is talking about violence. Maybe just maybe we might do something about it. Though the call to action is strong the course of the action is not clear to the audience and they walk away. 

Single Asian Female

I started following Michele Law on Twitter a few weeks ago so I'm quite looking forward to tonight. Ran into Sally again. She's done a film about a boy who gets his period. Must watch it. 

Into the show! 

The set looks like all the bedrooms of my high school friends uptop and like the local Chinese restaurant down stairs. Right down to the dark 'bamboo' Tiffany chairs and red table cloths. 

Smashing dialogue. We open with Pearl singing I WILL SURVIVE on top of a table celebrating her divorce. Single in neon lights up. She's ambitious and ready to start a new life. We meet her younger daughter Mai who is struggling with being not Aussie enough along with all the other teen issues. (And her brilliant friend Katie.) Asian in neon lights up. Finally we meet Zoe an aspiring professional violinist late for an audition because of a recent tinder date. Dealing with a bitch who also wants the gig. Female in neon lights.  Act 1 unravels Pearl has a secret she is trying to tell her girls but they are so wrapt up in their own troubles she can't get it out. But she gives and gives to them. Closing the restaurant and clearing it out but still offering to throw an after formal party for Mai (though after meeting the awful Lana we all know how that will turn out). Then a toilet rises out of up stage with Zoe and a pile of tests in get hand, pregnant. Simultaneously the phone rings and she's offered the orchestra spot she needs. Three women highlighted alone. Family. 

Act two:

Well you know it's great when the audience aren't ready to give up clapping so they have to turn the lights up to get us to leave! 

Heartbreaking secret is that she's being deported thanks to her husband shady business dealings in her name. Her abusive ex husband who raped her and hurt her and made her feel less than the amazing woman she is. 

Super love Zoe who has panick attacks and copes with them just normal and noone freaks out. They  just do the things she needs. Zoe's boyfriend is so hot. And so so amazingly great at being a normal human. 

This play was  a scream out loud funny, with sobs mixed in once you loved them so much you wish never to be parted from the Wong's. I'm in Chains indeed. 

Top Girls

Crash blackouts conceal each scene change so we feel.like we are jumping from one place to the next. The dinnet party looks like a Chinese banquet room but all the food is white. The Wild Swan orders Waldorf salad. Each self obsessed but the dialogue feels so natural. Overlapping, some times repeated stories intertwined and unique. Gret stealing potatoes for later and describing the descent into hell to kill devils. Drunk Victorian lady stripping it all of to be free. Pope Joan killing the mood with her death. The theft of children and the despair of men every being or doing something kind. Then it all ends in drunkenness. Black

Cut to our host recruiting with all the worst of decisions on display. Black. Cut to her neice hiding in the garden from her mum with a friend much younger than get but yet still more mature. The rain pours down as the shimmering party curtain descended. Black

Interval

Move into the office with the dinner host. Hitting all the sexist tropes in interview form somehow much worse cause its women saying them to other women. Each of the cast appears again in a different role. Strange flip to class in final scene with the sister. 

Overall the performances were superb but the totally black transitions last too long to keep the flow going. Plus this feels so dated. It's white middle class feminism with all the tone deaf notes and poor portrayals of women who are different. Amazingly acted but otherwise flat.