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Women on the Verge

Women on the Verge should be commended for tackling a difficult issue in such a challenging form.
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Image: lamama.com.au

Women on the Verge tells the story of four women in very difficult situations. A housewife trapped at home by a domineering and abusive husband, a prostitute who finds herself once more in a psychiatric ward, a victim of a brutal rape and a women trying to balance work, motherhood and an unsupportive partner. The story is certainly an interesting and relevant one but unfortunately poor execution meant that it fell well short of its potential.

The play is based on a work by Nobel Prize laureate Dario Fo and his partner Franca Rame, whose work has inspired number of recent interpretations and adaptations. Fo is well-known for the politicised nature of his work and his determination to combat institutional and societal wrong-doing through his art. He is known too for his innovative use of improvisation and so-called illegitimate theatre forms so his work offers wide range to any who would take it on. Women on the Verge clearly aspires to similarly unorthodox, provocative and satirical style but these kind of avant garde forms have little room for error.

Women on the verge sits somewhere in the middle of the experimental and conventional and as a result makes for a confusing interaction. The play is comprised primarily of four monologues on a minimal stage. With almost total reliance on dialogue to carry the performance, the words and story need to be of the highest quality but they frequently lacked the depth to really bring the audience in. The third monologue of the rape victim was a notable exception, but it too was let down by an ambivalent ending. The first monologue of the housewife was entertaining and funny in the vein of Fo and Rame’s more well-known monologues such as “My Mother” but felt disconnected from the others.

The cabaret segues provided a touch of the absurd but felt a little jarring, particularly after very serious subject matter and there was something uncomfortable about having the other three performers remain on a darkened section of the stage while one told her story. It was also peculiar to have a screen at the back of the stage that kept scrolling through images including a selection of TV stations. Perhaps these touches were meant to unsettle the audience, but if so it was unclear to what end.

Women on the Verge should be commended for tackling a difficult issue in such a challenging form and reviving the work of Fo and Rame but needs to be more fully developed and refined before it can successfully deliver on such an ambitious vision. 

Rating: 2.5 Stars out of 5 

Women on the Verge

Director: Jaime Wilson Ramirez
Performers: Maria Paula Afanador, Camila Palacio, Samantha Urquijo and Stephanie Valenzuela

La Mama Courthouse
17 – 21 June

Raphael Solarsh
About the Author
Raphael Solarsh is writer from Melbourne whose work has appeared in The Guardian, on Writer’s Bloc and in a collection of short stories titled Outliers: Stories of Searching. When not seeing shows, he writes fiction and tweets at @RS_IndiLit.