• theatre
  • features
  • faqs
  • contact
  • theatre
  • features
  • faqs
  • contact
  Art Murmurs - Wellington Reviews

Reviews

Waiting for Shark Week

14/3/2020

Comments

 

Jenny Nimon

Picture
Waiting for Shark Week is an hour of feminist buffoonery, sincerity and rage that charms, entertains and educates – and possibly also startles a non-menstruater or two. Directed and co-written by Dr Lori Leigh with performers Stevie Hancox-Monk, Pippa Drakeford-Croad, Maggie White and Sarah Bergbusch, this show is a powerful sketch-based comedy that calls out sexism in the theatre industry, veiled as the preservation of (male) playwrights’ visions.

The stage is set with a blue backdrop, a couple of red improv sitables and a single white balloon. When the show starts, Maggie White hauls a tree on stage, making a string of innuendos about bushes. But when Pippa Drakeford-Croad and Stevie Hancox-Monk come out, I kick myself for not having worked it out sooner – the show is titled Waiting for Shark Week, after all. As Vagimir and Estrogen, they play out a series of Waiting for Godot parodies throughout the show. The set design is a perfect rip-off, and so are the scenes, with the first replacing Estragon’s boot with a tricky-to-use menstrual cup. The clowning in these scenes by Hancox-Monk and Drakeford-Croad is spot on. It’s a solid ‘fuck you’ to the Beckett Estate, proving that women can not only perform a show so ‘intellectual’, but can actually take it a step further by offering up a critical commentary on the issues its estate raises. Surprise, surprise, women have brains too. But because these scenes are so well done, it does create niche content that sadly doesn’t seem to land for every audience member – you have to be familiar with Waiting for Godot to catch the (ironically easy to draw) feminist parallels.

Fortunately for this portion of the audience, the show isn’t just made up of Godot references. It is chock full of sketches that drive home the misogyny and objectification that women actors face in this industry. There’s a beep-del test, where the cast members are forced to run back and forth across stage until they can name a film that passes the Bechdel test (with the successful titles being Legally Blonde, My Little Pony and Black Panther). There is also a scene where each of the women are auditioning for a role and get ridiculed by the man on the audition panel (voiced by Johnny Paul) for talking back and being ‘too voluptuous to have done ballet’. This spirals into a powerful segment where White lists off the times she has been turned into a ‘socially acceptable fetish’ in acting roles for being curvy, starting with an incident when she was only 14. It is sickening.

Hancox-Monk also delivers an incredible monologue of quotes, starting with sexist comments close to her role as Hamlet last year in Summer Shakespeare Wellington’s production of Hamlet. She then moves through to rejection letters from the Beckett Estate for productions of Waiting for Godot that had hoped to cast women, and finally calls out the Pop-up Globe for its ‘#MeToo’ adaptation of Taming of the Shrew. It is all ‘historically accurate from the comments section’, she jabs. 

The truth is that I have little to criticise in Waiting for Shark Week. It is an unapologetic show that calls out the patriarchy’s bullshit in every way: with humour, with intellect, with anger and with poignancy. It is definitely in its early development stages and could use some more tightening and polishing as well as some sound design, but it is an incredible show, and it is taking up the space it deserves. Please go and see it. 

Waiting for Shark Week is on at BATS until Tuesday 17 March at 7:30pm on Sunday, and 8:30pm every other night. To book your tickets or for information about other shows in the festival, visit the Fringe website.

Comments

    Local Honest Reviews

    At Art Murmurs, our aim is to provide honest and constructive art reviews to the Wellington community.

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    September 2021
    July 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015

    Categories

    All
    All Age Appropriate
    Art
    BATS
    Beauty Standards
    Black Comedy
    Body Positive
    Circa
    Circus
    Comedy
    Comedy Festival 2018
    Comedy Festival 2019
    Comedy Gala 2022
    Community Theatre
    Dance
    Devised
    Documentary
    Drag
    Drama
    Emerging Artist
    Exhibition
    Experimental
    Female Artists
    Feminism
    Feminist
    Festival
    For Kids
    Fringe
    Fun
    Gallery
    Gryphon Theatre
    Hannah Playhouse
    Heart + Music
    History
    Improv
    Interactive
    International
    Interview
    Ivy
    Lighting
    Local
    Mental Health
    Monologue
    Music
    Musical
    New Writing
    New Zealand
    NZ Comedy
    NZ Fringe
    NZIF
    On Tour
    Performance Poetry
    Photography
    Photospace Gallery
    Physical Theatre
    Political
    Politics
    Premiere
    Pyramid Club
    Queer
    Race
    Roxy LIVE
    Science
    Scruffy Bunny Improv Theatre
    Sexual Violence
    Shakespeare
    Site Specific
    Site-specific
    Sketch
    Solo Show
    Song
    Spoken Word
    Stagecraft
    Storytelling
    Tahi Festival
    Te Auaha
    Theatre
    Thought Provoking
    Thought-provoking
    Thriller
    Toi Poneke Gallery
    Verbatim
    Victoria University
    Violence
    Virtual Theatre
    Weekly
    Wellington
    Wellington Footlights
    Wellington Repertory