Venue: Flight Path Theatre (Marrickville NSW), Jan 17 – 27, 2024
Playwright: Chloe Lethlean Higson
Director: Jess Ramsey
Cast: Gabrielle Bowen, Emily Crow, Niky Markovic, Alyssa Peters
Images by Clare Hawley
Theatre review
Chloe Lethlean Higson’s The Strong Charmion takes place 1921 in Sydney, where circus artist Rosalie Whitewood works a striptease trapeze act, delighting and titillating crowds with her exceptionally tall and muscular physique. Inspired by American strongwoman Charmion, Higson’s play is about the life and loves of a woman who dared, a century ago, to be different not only with her appearance, but also with her evolving desires.
Characters in the play are fascinating, with thoroughly modern depictions of people in a historical context, making this a meaningful exercise in nostalgia. Direction by Jess Ramsey demonstrates a distinct spiritedness, but greater attention to detail is required, for the storytelling to be more engaging. Actor Gabrielle Bowen brings an appropriate sense of authority to the eponymous role, leading a cast brimming with passionate dedication.
Bella Saltearn’s set and costume designs are memorable, richly imagined and implemented with exceptional taste, bringing considerable finesse to the production. Lights by Catherine Mai are sensual and inventive, effective at conveying the appropriate tone for each scene. Music and sounds by Andy Freeborn offer dynamic range to the staging, bringing both heightened drama and restrained melancholia, to help amplify emotional dimensions of The Strong Charmion.
It seems we are only now beginning to acknowledge, that some people’s sexualities do change with time. In The Strong Charmion there is admirable effort not only to demonstrate the naturalness with which a person’s sexual proclivities can transform, but also that each person’s relationship with their own body image is unique, and can therefore never really adhere to traditional modes of categorisation, including the gender binary. It is probable that humans are by nature queer, that the immovable cisgender-heterosexuality that has come to define our hegemony, is actually experienced only by a real minority.
Suzy Goes See 