Culture
Wars
Motherland
at the Underbelly and The Idiot Colony at the
Pleasance take all-female casts and place them into
age-old roles: as mothers and as lunatics.
The Idiot Colony features a Rick Astley song. And it's set in a psychiatric ward. It's a play with a sense of humour, albeit a dark one. Performed by Cassie Friend, Claire Coache and Rebecca Loukes, in many ways it's a clown piece. The opening image is of three women standing in a row, with their hair covering their faces - it looks like their heads are back-to-front. As these masks of hair are combed aside they reveal Victoria, Mary and the ironically named Joy. These women exist in a limbo of depression, disconnection and drugs. The surreal conceit of play is to situate them simultaneously in the ward and in a hairdressers' salon. Joy has had her hair permed and shocked. It's ambiguous as to whether the hairdressers is an imagined or remembered space, or whether it's an occupational therapy section of the hospital. This ambiguity only serves to heighten the suspended, liminal quality of the play.
Through some beautiful ingenuity with towels and boot polish, we see the moments when these women fell into limbo and became fragmented people. Each one, like Eve, fell through sex – victims of mid-twentieth century society's attitude towards womens sexuality. Despite the humour, this is a deeply tragic piece, based on research into the real histories of women who were locked away, their lives hidden and institutionalised. The Idiot Colony is eloquent and abstract in its response to these stories.
By Iona Firouzabadi, 24th August 2008
The Idiot Colony features a Rick Astley song. And it's set in a psychiatric ward. It's a play with a sense of humour, albeit a dark one. Performed by Cassie Friend, Claire Coache and Rebecca Loukes, in many ways it's a clown piece. The opening image is of three women standing in a row, with their hair covering their faces - it looks like their heads are back-to-front. As these masks of hair are combed aside they reveal Victoria, Mary and the ironically named Joy. These women exist in a limbo of depression, disconnection and drugs. The surreal conceit of play is to situate them simultaneously in the ward and in a hairdressers' salon. Joy has had her hair permed and shocked. It's ambiguous as to whether the hairdressers is an imagined or remembered space, or whether it's an occupational therapy section of the hospital. This ambiguity only serves to heighten the suspended, liminal quality of the play.
Through some beautiful ingenuity with towels and boot polish, we see the moments when these women fell into limbo and became fragmented people. Each one, like Eve, fell through sex – victims of mid-twentieth century society's attitude towards womens sexuality. Despite the humour, this is a deeply tragic piece, based on research into the real histories of women who were locked away, their lives hidden and institutionalised. The Idiot Colony is eloquent and abstract in its response to these stories.
By Iona Firouzabadi, 24th August 2008