First Hand Woman: Why!? Woman Why?

First Hand Woman: which one is denial?

Okay, before I start, I must admit my bias. Right from reading the play title and synopsis in the "Next Stage Festival":http://fringetoronto.com/nstf/nstf_shows.html brochure, down to learning the character names (denial, anger, depression, etc.), I was ready to give up 75 minutes of my life I would never get back. The use of phrases like “powerful journey” and “seeking redemption” just brought up far too many flashbacks to female collective theatre pieces by susceptible 19-year-olds who had just discovered some fill-in-your-own-blank feminist writer upon breaking up with some boy they thought was their soul mate.

Upon entering the theatre, I dared this ensemble to prove me so very very wrong. Instead what I got was my every clichéd “fantasy” come true. Sarah Michelle Brown’s *First Hand Woman* is more of a collection of regurgitated self-help books filtered through Cosmopolitan magazine than anything that feels like a true journey of heartache and healing that producers Fire Up Co-operative claim it to be. Right from the start, with the reveal of all five actresses in variously styled black spandex costumes, accessorized with coloured scarves to “differentiate” their characters, dancing around in a circle chanting and telling the “allegorical” story of a lamb who met her seemingly princely lamb (nope, not ram) one day, I could feel the proverbial hammer on my head. This self-proclaimed journey set in the mind of one woman which has been divided by the grief of lost love, takes us through her life, via a million water and earth images that would make even hippies stop hugging trees, with a prince charming who turns into an abusive ogre.

Esther Jun’s direction completes this clichéd script with a lot of the semi-circle formations and remembrances of theatre school warm-ups, making the show seem more like an acting exercise in poetry and contact improvisation than anything ready for an audience.

All that being said, I must now admit that the cast is quite remarkable. Their conviction and commitment to such a trite script astounds me and is really what gives this show its few moving moments. And no, I am not even remotely referring to the playwrights own oxymoronic warning of a “spontaneous simulated orgasm” that seems to make its way into every bit of press for this show. That attempt at edginess through the same tired old discussion about “faking it” is, by far, the most unnecessary and embarrassing part of the piece.

All in all, this exploration of the stages of grief doesn’t remotely ring true, and at the end of the “journey” I felt like I had simply exacerbated even further my already enormous sense of frustration with a lot feminist theatre.

I don’t mean to negate all feminist collectives, but I wish women could get onstage together and explore something far more interesting instead of playing into every stereotypical story of our fragility and in the process making Sex in the City seem like a documentary.

_First Hand Woman by Sarah Michelle Brown, presented by Fire Up Co-operative. Directed by Esther Jun. Starring: Sarah Michelle Brown, Kiran Friesen, Patrice Goodman, Allana Harkin, Nicole Leroux. For more information, empower yourself_ "here":http://fringetoronto.com/nstf/nstf_shows.html

By Lindy Zucker