That’s sort of the purpose of going to festivals like Edinburgh and our home-grown Sydney Fringe. To see work that’s raw and developing. To immerse in wonder at what trends are emerging, what styles are popular and what looks like it is going to have a life. Pretty much everything I see has passion behind it and at 10 bucks a ticket you know they are not doing it for the money.
FOREIGN WOMAN had a brief showing at Blood Moon Theatre recently. And the reality is, that if you can get me to sit in that faded 70s disco glamour with uncomfortable seats and limited tech and have to fumble for a tissue , then you have done the theatrical equivalent of decoding the DNA helix.
The show is about what we inherit from our progenitors and what we revere and what we aspire to. Nicola Kuiper and Sandy Whittem have taken their grandmothers’ stories of being a Foreign Woman in the great land of Oz and crafted a silly, moving, intimate cabaret which, surprisingly, has a cabbage motif. Irena and Dorothy arrived from Poland and Canada by different routes through war torn Europe and through love at second sight on the frozen prairie and both desire a better vegetable existence for their offspring.
FOREIGN WOMAN lacks a little polish but it packs a hella punch, well above the weight of most Fringe shows I see. Kuiper and Whitten have crafted the story with care. They begin by speaking directly about their desire for us to meet their ‘awesome’ Nanas and so we do. Not just through their eyes but, with a transcendence of time and space, the elder women, who never met in real life, appear before us to express the true zeal of an immigrant to succeed. Not just for themselves but for the family yet to come.
As honed to 50 minutes by their granddaughters, their stories are well chosen, interesting and expressed with love and a strong theatrical flair in the influence of symbolism and the uniting power of women’s stories. They mix it up with some pretty competent dancing, soft shoe and a barynya, and clear characterisation. There’s comedy and pathos in well written balance and their acting morphs seamlessly from state to state to really give us that strong sense of these foreign women. Kuiper and Whitten have a wealth of costumery and hats which they dealt splendidly with the malfunction of. Mind you, those final costumes are such a lovely and loving evocation of the nannas.
Then there is the original music of the show. Musician Josh Cake is also accompanist to the pair and his playing is replete with respect for the women’s work. His lightness of touch on the electric keyboard is undoubtedly part of the impact of the gentler songs. In the Raindrop Song, which is superb … standalone and standout and breathtakingly moving … he does such a discreet job of forming an atmosphere around the interpretation. That was the one that had me tissue hunting.
Musically there are things to be said about the length of some songs and the overdone reprises. The voices do need some extra training, though they both carry the tune perfectly adequately and really rise to the challenge in several places, yet I would not want to see this show interpreted by anyone else. Nor would I like to see it slickened or styled any differently because it works so brilliantly in a naïve homage that emotionally resonates with truth and history and energy.
FOREIGN WOMEN is my pick of the Sydney Fringe so far. With luck it will have a new outing somewhere close to you, keep an eye out for it.
