Venue: SBW Stables Theatre (Kings Cross NSW), Jul 8 – 20, 2019
Playwright: Fringe Wives Club (Victoria Falconer, Rowena Hutson, Tessa Waters)
Director: Clare Bartholomew
Cast: Laura Frew, Rowena Hutson, Tessa Waters
Images by Kate Pardey
Theatre review
It is a rowdy cabaret with three women in sequinned jumpsuits, very excited by feminism, and thrilled at the prospect of preaching to the converted. Christened Glittery Clittery: A Consensual Party, the show is perfectly suited to our current climate of placing centre stage, all things woke and womanly. Devised by Victoria Falconer, Rowena Hutson and Tessa Waters, collectively known as the Fringe Wives Club, the work consists of relentlessly amusing songs, and witty repartee that make for an enjoyable hour. It has a coalescing power, through its comical observations and vivacious representations, that makes us feel like a tribal audience, united in laughter against the patriarchy.
Directed by Clare Bartholomew, the cabaret presentation is intensely energetic, if slightly frenetic and unfocused in parts. Music is one of its indubitable strengths, although sound engineering could be improved to exploit more fully, the rousing pop potentials of the backing tracks. The performers bring a palpable warmth to the space, perhaps too polite in their approach, but all three are earnest personalities who insist on our adoration; Hutson is particularly likeable when temporarily assuming the scintillating part, “Lagoon of Mystery”.
Glittery Clittery is a sweaty, joyous mess; its text accurately expresses the thoughts and experiences of modern women everywhere in the Western world, but more importantly, the bawdy vigour with which its characters conduct themselves, is a marvellous exemplification of a new feminist spirit that we can utilise in conjuring up new feminine identities. This “clitterati” is unlikely to be anything close to what our grandparents had envisioned, and that is a sure sign of the progress that is under way for us all.
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