the "f" word
Dates 19-21 May 2005 Venue The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts
Reviewer Erin Jane
Director Micki Maunsell Cast Sharon Heath, Courteney Dobbie, and Tammy Bentz
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Sharon Heath & Tammy Bentz in the "f" word |
I really wanted to like this play, because it is about feminism, and to quote one of its lines – “How can you be a woman and not be a feminist?”
The play features three women, personifying three different stereotypes of feminism. There is the “butchy” woman in army fatigues who wants to annihilate all men, the hippie mother-earth type draped in scarves and dancing around chanting exultations to womanhood and the miracle of birth, and, finally, the powerful, successful business woman who believes men are to be manipulated in order for women to get ahead. These characters are deliberately exaggerated to make a point, but this point is made at the expense of intelligent dialogue.
In the end, the characters are so over the top that I found this play annoying. The ideas they wanted to express came through clearly enough, but perhaps too clearly and with no opportunity for the audience to participate mentally. Where subtly was needed, it was wholly absent.
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There is one moment where the play takes an entertaining turn, with the three women attacking each other. But this does not last long, and they soon reconcile their differences in favour of their common gender. If this sounds clichéd, it was.
However, the play is only an hour long, and the actors do not falter in their parts. They, indeed, throw themselves passionately into monologues and even song (albeit inappropriately, I felt).
This play was overly accessible to its audience. It could have been much less obvious, and much more humourous. The “f” words here are "failingly flagrant," or perhaps "forcefully" accessible, or even "frowningly" banal. This was, all in all, disappointing stuff, given the potentially promising material and the importance of the topic.
© 2005 Erin Jane