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The Female Of The Species
State Theatre
Playhouse
Tues 15 April
Until Sat 3 May
 I was awed and intrigued by stage designer Mary Moore's giant Macintosh laptop on which a tedious game of Solitaire was underway. The screen later displays sound and sight bites of rabid feminist Margot Mason's brilliant career when suddenly the screen rolls up to reveal the study of her country estate surrounded by mooing cows and green grass. No bull. Poor Mason is suffering writer's block on page one of her umpteenth feminist treatise.
While inspired by an incident involving Germaine Greer, Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith submits that Mason is a fictional famous feminist "who is the best and worst of the world stage types, a searing thinker and outright monster, a brilliant iconoclast and irritating show-off, visionary yet egotist." Hel-lo-o? That sounds exactly like Germaine Greer IMHO.
Ms Mason is a Gulliver in the land of Lilliput - tied up and helpless except for her wit, Mason is assailed, prodded, threatened and insulted by all caricatures affected by the feminist debate: a distraught mother, an idealistic young woman, a sensitive new age guy, mister macho man, and a bisexual leftover from the swinging 60s. Largely plotless with a new character arriving through the French doors from the outside world just when everything that could be said was said thrice, Murray-Smith and director Catherine Fitzgerald - the award-winning ex-Vital Statistix Artistic Director who never has a dull moment in her plays - pull off a machine gun-fast, witty and comical farce bursting with every wild and whacky feminist idea and its ramifications.
Michaela Cantwell makes one of the best entrances in theatrical history as Mason's daughter gone walkabout from her youngsters in a fit of despair. Cantwell's comic business, timing and expressions were the exemplar of hard work making comedy look natural and easy. Bravo!
Amanda Muggleton made much of Murray-Smith's Margot Mason - rant, cant and scant regard for anybody else. Geoff Revell looked way too comfortable as the late entry publisher. With the rest of this excellent cast - Rhiannon Owen (intellectual but unstable waif), Peter Michell (well meaning nice guy) and Tony Briggs (hot guy) - Fitzgerald orchestrated split-timing physical and verbal chaos in a clear presentation.
First shown in Melbourne in 2006 and on its way around the world, 'The Female Of The Species' is a humourous reminder that each of us ultimately has to take responsibility for ourselves, even after reading guidebooks and genuflecting to gurus.
David Grybowski
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