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Pig Tales Written & performed by Julie McNamara Wed 10 November, Feast @ Fowler's Live Rather ingeniously formulated around the seemingly innocuous nursery rhyme 'This little piggie went to market', Julie McNamara's solo play deals with a variety of complex and challenging issues. In 'Pig Tales' she draws the audience into a complex and compelling semi-autobiographical drama on the series of issues surrounding gender confusion in the fraught life of a girl raised as a boy in an Anglo-Irish household. McNamara brilliantly exposes the trials and tribulations of someone who is brutalised and yet arrives, at the end, triumphant, from the insidious clutches of the medieval and unsympathetic machinations of both the Catholic Church and the English mental health system. And it deals with such often harrowing issues without turning to polemic, and with integrity by means of a finely crafted script, great production values and above all the integrity and fine acting skills of McNamara herself. Aided by excellent lighting, video, sound samples, song and visual images, 'Pig Tales' is the most touching and effective piece of solo theatre I have witnessed in some time and without doubt will be the central jewel in this year's festival. It is not hard to see why McNamara's show has won Critics Awards in the UK - including one by given by the prestigious London 'Times'. 'Pig Tales' draws its audience in, tweaking a variety of emotions - from empathy, through shock to laughter - as the actor dives brilliantly between costumes and characters as varied as the central protagonist of the piece, her mother, a priest, a vicious police officer and a text book based and totally unsympathetic psychiatrist. Congratulations go to all involved in this production including Feast's artistic director for having the foresight and vision to present such a piece of challenging theatre.  |
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