Ovation to Madeline Flood and Madeleine Wilson for their high energy performance in Megan Sampson’s production of Florence Keith-Roach’s EGGS.
In a tight series of vignettes, these two women navigate a fragile friendship that began at Uni, coursed through their courses and has recently been moored while they pursued different paths.
Thundering towards the age of thirty, one of the pair is acutely conscious of the ticking biological clock. She is a corporate career climber convinced that her true vocation is as a mother. Rather than breaking the glass ceiling she’s eager to accept a glass slipper from any likely prick charming who will fertilise her fairy tale wish.
The other is resigned to the fact that she is devoid of maternal instinct. A product of IVF, she considers herself a test tube baby, a Frankenstein with no view to a womb.
In a slick sixty minutes, this production pulses through a tumultuous year of their scrappy sisterhood, somersaulting through life changes from secondary to sublime.
Ambience of changing settings and altered moods are wonderfully realised by lighting designer, Izzy Morrissey in conjunction with sound designer and composer, Maddy Briggs, aided and abetted by the props and costume design by Lily Moody. There’s no walking in eggshells here. Florence Keioth-Roach’s script, while honestly hilarious, seriously examines self destruction, sexuality, depression, loneliness, and the societal and personal pressures of reproduction.
Scrambled, fried, hard boiled, she puts a lot of eggs into one basket and breaks out with an emotional omelette served by two exceptional performances.
EGGS is now playing at The Old Fitz Theatre, 129 Dowling Street, Woolloomooloo.
