Two of the most innovative, powerful and mind-bending shows I’ve seen this Edinburgh Fringe have been created by trans women. Each play showcases theatre-makers on the cutting edge of theatre practice who are pushing their ideas and performance into bold, unchartered territory. Both riff around a text (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Germaine Greer’s essay ‘On Why Sex Change is a Lie’). Both invite their audience to get right inside the trans experience and both are an exhilarating, wild ride.
Cruel Britannia: After Frankenstein
★★★★1/2
Freaks they call us, Frank. Freaks!
Cruel Britannia: After Frankenstein, written and performed by Kristen Smyth, is a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s novel. Smyth uses the text to take us on a Gothic journey from the drugs, clubs and toxic masculinity of 80s London to their recent gender reassignment surgery. Using Frankenstein’s monster as a metaphor for the fear, loathing and rejection they experienced as a trans woman (and also their internalised transphobia) we witness them transform from tough, alpha male Frank to the fragile, delicate Ruby.
Smyth’s depiction of wide boy South London Frank is utterly compelling. Acid house music from the 80s plays as they don a sharp suit and strut around the stage, dangerous and commanding with their steely gaze, their alpha swagger, tough South London accent and banter: ‘I like it. The smell of money. My money. I got fingers in pies. In all kinds of places. I like a bit of a scrap on the weekend. I got to get something out of my system.’ Smyth’s writing and performance pops with attitude and a smouldering aggression.
By contrast, Ruby is fragile and unsure of herself. ‘For the next five hours I’m handing out tickets. That’ll be 50p. At the coat check. It’s a life of sweeping moments of magic and here they don’t look at me funny.’ At times her character seems spectral – as though she’s struggling to exist. She’s like a shadow – a wisp of smoke in the wake of Frank’s visceral power.
The script veers from Frank’s experience to Ruby’s. Before long, Frank is deteriorating into a drug stupor and Ruby is homeless and selling her body, wearing the stigma and shame of Frankenstein’s monster like a cloak. But, as with Frankenstein’s monster, there are moments of connection that get her through. The final scene – a masterful blending of Frankenstein’s monster with Smyth’s real-life experience, is utterly thrilling.
After Frankenstein is cleverly directed by Blank Space Production’s Cohan and has been commissioned to perform at Arts Centre Melbourne in November this year. This Edinburgh Fringe run is a warm-up for the big professional season and a chance for Edinburgh audiences to witness the birth of a great piece of theatre.
The production is not without its flaws – Smyth needs to work more on developing Ruby’s character – she’s a little weak and ill-defined compared to Frank and it is at times confusing knowing who Smyth is playing, but with a little more character work and polish, this has all the makings of compelling theatre. It’s the type of production that stays with you long after you’ve left the theatre.
Cruel Britannia: After Frankenstein‘s final run at the Space on the Mile was 17 August. It will tour to Melbourne in November 2024.
Ugly Sisters
★★★★
On the day that Female Eunuch was issued in America, a person in flapping draperies rushed up to me and grabbed my hand. ‘Thank you so much for what you’ve done for us girls.’ I should have said ‘You’re a man. Female Eunuch has done nothing for you. Piss off.
So begins Ugly Sisters, an absurd examination of the ugly tract quoted above, in an essay written by Germaine Greer in 1989 called ‘On Why Sex Change is a Lie’. Developed and performed by award-winning duo Laurie Ward and Charli Cowgill, it riffs around the meeting of Greer and the trans woman, with increasingly bizarre performance art.
It opens with Cowgill performing the speech dressed as Greer, while Ward, outlandishly dressed as the trans woman in green taffeta, a pink balaclava, nipple tassels, a blonde wig and over-sized plastic lips on her mouth. She chases Greer around the stage with a leaf blower before knocking her to the ground, then invites audience members to come on stage and sprinkle dirt on her before delivering a curious eulogy.
This hallucinatory piece of performance art breaks new ground in queer theatre-making, pushing the audience into all sorts of uncomfortable places, and inviting us to abandon all previous notions of what theatre and gender should be. Greer is murdered, buried and resurrected. She engages in a battle of power with the trans woman, where each one has a turn at gaining the upper hand before reconciling in a sensual, revelatory finale, which is absolutely riveting.
Read: Festival reviews: YOAH, Apricity, Afrique en Cirque, Ten Thousand Hours, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Ward and Cowgill’s company piss/CARNATION won a Fringe First award last year with their 52 Monologues for Young Transexuals, and Ugly Sisters cements them as theatre-makers to watch. Their approach to theatre making is bold, fresh and utterly fearless. This ground-breaking show defiantly ushers in a brave new world of agency and power for trans people and invites audiences to step outside the gender binary. It is also a confident rejection of feminist transphobia.
Ugly Sisters will be performed at Underbelly Cowgate until 25 August.
