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Leah Purcell 'The Good Body' Union Cinema (Adelaide Uni) Thurs 2 March Bread is Satan. Ice cream is the enemy and don't even start with chocolate! The subtle/brutal relationships between women and food and their bodies (and their mothers) is explored through a personal yet universal one woman show borne of writer Eve Ensler's obsession in the wake of the success of her worldwide sensation 'The Vagina Monologues' - her broadening stomach. Leah Purcell taking the role of Ensler and her various character driven monologues handles the range of accents well though with some slippage, particularly between the nuanced American tongues, the range of 'r' sounds proving troublesome. The hot Union Cinema was unforgiving in the latter parts of the play as it pushed past an hour duration, however Purcell's performance did not lose verve or passion. She excelled in particular as she stepped into the shoes of the botox bitch, a maniac with a constant pleasant smile, the Beverly Hills matron at the vulva support group who had her vagina laser tightened for her husbands pleasure, mistakenly thinking it would increase her own, and the endearing Latina Carmen who lived in constant fear of revealing her 'spread'. While the play makes the statement that this constant attention to perfecting is distracting women from more important things, it is the stories from the 'developing' world - where women actually loved their bodies - which crystallised a more significant point to me: this (literal) navel gazing is just another indulgent, invented complaint of a bloated culture. The scene where Eve follows an Afghani woman into a secret ice cream eating space and indulges with them was illuminating. The Taliban beat women for eating foods such as ice cream, in America women beat themselves up.  |
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