Rat Dog Double Bill | Esther Dougherty & Siobhan Gibbs
Two shows, back to back, offered as a double bill, but actually quite strange bedfellows. Not illsuited exactly, but rather like two different cuisines on the same menu.
The first, Pawpaw Dog & Other Dog, written and directed by Esther Dougherty. A toothsome offering, featuring some young and vibrant creatives.
The show started with a warning of gendered language, and the show notes also warn of a gender-ish play, “the dream of the sense of the thought process of someone mentally tackling the problem of their gender.” Quite a sentence, but I’ll play along. And some wrestling in and around gendered language was done, to be sure. But for myself, gender was the grinder through which specious questions of identity were dissected, but the play turned on something even broader, and more simple… What am I, and how can I tell? And who is this who asks the question?
Surrealist, and dripping with symbolism, the show was ludicrously, awkwardly funny, a philosopher’s treat. A complex tangle, perplexing and challenging perhaps for anyone looking for a fluffy night out. But perhaps not. The two dogs were played wonderfully by Pavle Banovic (Other Dog) and Liam Linane (Pawpaw Dog). Highly physicalised manifestations of canine creatures, played with humour and startling commitment, in simple costumes that were well utilised. Banovic gave a Bill and Ted-esque flair to his simpleton character, who knows what he knows and is single-minded in his devotion to his trapped friend. Linane jumps into his whole body as Pawpaw Dog and it’s unwelcome alter-ego. There was a storytelling scene that lagged a little with a text-heavy monologue, making it hard to pull the simple truth out of it, but for the most part these two captured my attention completely for the duration of the show. I suspect you could have enjoyed the performances without thinking deeply at all, if you were that kind of person.
I will add my usual feedback to just about every show I see these days, ( I might be getting old and impatient) which is trim five minutes off every scene, take out every unnecessary thing, because the core of this show is a total treat, and it needs no padding to make it sing.
The drama of the dogs and their philosophical wrestling was interspersed by delightful dance scenes, which on the night I attended were performed by Neesha Taumata Mamea (pawpaw Tree) and Zayah Bond (Bee). This introduced a beautiful element of whimsy to counteract the text-heavy and increasingly sombre main dialogue, and further added to my sense of wrestling with the biggest, most complex and yet simple quandaries. The two vogued together and apart in the oldest dance of all, that of flowers and the bees, and left me at the end of the play with a sense that life is coming along exactly as it should be, and it is also and at the same time, a giant mess of ludicrous emotion and insurmountable ennui.
A gorgeous piece of theatre, from a writer who clearly thinks deeply and endlessly and carefully, and I look forward to seeing the next iteration.
The show really could have stood alone as a production, but the night is young and Sewer Rat Girl is ready to snack.
Siobhan Gibbs takes to the stage in her first full-length solo production. A super dynamic performer with great range, she’s been catching the attention of just about every indie theatre aficionado in recent times. As my friend said, she is gonna be a super star, zipping all over the stage with shrewd nimble frenetic energy. It’s not long now, heard it here first.
Sewer Rat Girl is a festival show, a crowd-pleaser with a brave performer who is taking advantage of her time on the stage to test herself in a thousand different ways. There’s a hodgepodge of ideas here, from finding self-love in spite of never meeting societal expectations, to letting go of judgemental opinions, to the importance of staying regular. We poke the stick of righteousness into the jelly of shame and wiggle it around, seeing what flakes off. There’s a sense of forced camaraderie, of a welcome party but a hostess you can’t quite trust. There’s some out-and-out feminist raunch, shades of riot grrrl al la 1994, long before this young actress knew it was even a thing. There is some very clear love coming through of obscene beauty queen Betty Grumble. It feels like a range of parlour games where someone changed every rule at least once.
For a freshly debuted work I’d say that it’s super fun albeit lacking a clear transference of the central question. What it needs to turn it from a high-quality good time into a motherloving masterpiece is that crystal shining question. I think I know what Rat Girl was trying to prove to herself, but I wasn’t altogether sure what she wanted from me. Acceptance? Faux horror? A flood of emotions? My endless loyalty deep below the earth? A good night’s sleep? A different snack? It could have been all or none.
The show ends with the stage a fabulous mess, which is always a sign that a good time was had by all.
My final verdict of the Double Bill? A great night watching juicy new works in an atmospheric hand-made workshop theatre. Would recommend. Keep an eye on all and sundry, more fresh things coming over the horizon.
