Fancy Long Legs | La Boite Theatre & Little Red Company

All images: Jade Ellis

There is a point in Fancy Long Legs where I become disproportionately annoyed.

And, I would stress, it’s highly unlikely most people will be similarly annoyed. Or, annoyed at all.

A new children’s theatre work debuting as part of 2024’s Brisbane Festival programme, Fancy Long Legs adapts a picture book by local artist and general multidisciplinary badass Rachel Burke to tell a story of embracing differences in perspective and experience. The plot concerns a spider, Fancy Long Legs, struggling to spin a web in the way that all of her spider friends do.

It’s a work that feels very connected to current discussions around neurodivergence in children and adults. Throughout, Fancy’s friends eagerly try to help Fancy conform to their ideas of how to get things done. However, such insistence on proven pathways only really exacerbates Fancy’s anxieties. It’s only when Fancy is given space and support to do things her way that she manages to achieve her goals and deliver an amazing web.

It is genuinely amazing, too. Burke collaborated with the production’s creative ensemble as a designer to create costumes, sets, and experiences that split the difference between feeling expertly crafted and playfully deployed. When Fancy’s web unfolds, it takes the form of a type of gigantic circus tent unfurling across the venue. It’s a technically demanding piece of work that also captures the DIY joy and imagination of building your own blanket fort.

You can’t question the heart that’s been poured into the production. Access & Education Consultants Madeleine Little and Annette Box have worked with the creative team to craft a production that feels kind, loving, and sensitive to the many diverse needs of audiences (child and adult). There is something of a dissonance between the work’s attempt to offer a gentle atmosphere being bookended by crowds cacophonously rolling in and out of the venue like breaking waves - but it’s not a work that could ever be accused of being insincere.

All images: Jade Ellis

Honestly, it’s the type of work I’d like to see championed by platforms like Brisbane Festival and La Boite as a general rule. It’s local, it’s ambitious, it’s kind, it’s inclusive, it’s fun. Fancy Long Legs even has a pretty good set of original songs for a kids show and, according to every parent I’ve ever met, that’s a damn miracle. (Shout out to Waveney Yasso, who wrote the songs.)

So, given all that, why did it annoy me so?

Ironically, it may have something to do with my own neurodivergence.

I am autistic. While there are many different experiences of autism, two commonly identified recurring traits is an special investment in ideas of accuracy and a good memory for facts and figures.

This is why I know that, while all spiders spin silk, roughly 50% of identified species don’t spin webs at all. That’s 25,000 species of spider that will never make a web.

And, specifically, you’ll particularly never see a tarantula spin a web.

So, when a show is premised on all spiders spinning webs and the characters gleefully say ‘Tarantula Bassett did it’ to encourage the main character to spin a web, my neurodivergent mind gets disproportionately peeved. Because, according to science, she absolutely did not.

Now, as I said, it’s profoundly unlikely anyone in the audience will find themselves similarly irritated. However, that irritation nevertheless connects to a larger issue I had with Fancy Long Legs. And, I suspect that my broader discomfort may actually be shared by more than a handful of pedantic spider enthusiasts.

In 2005 neo-noir buddy-comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, director and screenwriter Shane Black sneaks in a small observation that the story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is not as inclusive as it seems; its happy ending is simply Rudolph being commodified for his difference instead of ostracised and tormented.

(It’s worth noting that Shane Black later discovered he was autistic.)

All images: Jade Ellis

In Fancy Long Legs, Fancy’s triumph is that she manages to make a web. It’s established, if she didn’t make a web, she would likely be ostracised and tormented. Even without knowing much about spiders, it’s a slightly uncomfortable idea. When you realise that not even *most* spiders make webs, it feels especially unnecessary. In a work about inclusion, it mostly feels weird.

There is a beautiful song in the middle of Fancy Long Legs where Fancy is told that she is brave, smart, creative, and can do difficult things. It’s a lovely sentiment and Irena Lysiuk (as Incy) sings the absolute stuffing out of it. But, there’s never any real interrogation of the broader why that means Fancy needs to do these things.

I’m a trans person. I am brave, smart, creative, and can do difficult things. But, if I deployed all of those qualities toward ‘being’ the gender I was originally assigned (and, boy howdy, have I tried), I’d be doing myself and others a profound disservice. I would be forcing myself to be something I am not. And, even if I succeeded, it would not be a success. 

While Fancy Long Legs ends on a note of accepting and embracing our differences, it isn’t cleanly embodied by the show’s actual narrative or dynamics. We never actually get the message that NOT making a web is a totally acceptable way to be. For me, that dissonance undercut the experience of an otherwise lovely show.

It left me wondering - what would Fancy’s friends have done if she never actually made a web?     

‘Fancy Long Legs’ played at La Boite Theatre from 12-22 September as part of the 2024 Brisbane Festival.