Words: Elodie Marriott
Image: Clémence Rebourg

3 stars

“Thank you – thank you so much for all you’ve done for us girls.” Expressing her gratitude to Germaine Greer (Charli Cowgill), the feminist author of ‘The Female Eunuch’, a transgender woman (Laurie Ward) unwittingly becomes a catalyst for Greer’s 1989 transphobic article ‘On Why Sex Change is a Lie’.

In Ugly Sisters, Greer is at first depicted as a menacing and hostile figure, but later, when acting out imagined conversations with the transgender woman, there’s an intimacy. Ward and Cowgill even switch roles after a warm love scene. The choice to centre the show around this personal desire to be understood, rather than focusing on anger or wider injustice, is powerful.

The show is fairly discordant, a mash of provoking sequences. There is a burial scene where volunteers from the crowd are encouraged to dump fistfuls of dirt onto Greer’s body. A jerky dance set to pounding music externalises internal feelings of strife and anguish. The show is not over-explained, leaving much up to the viewer’s personal interpretation.

“Laughter is a function of catharsis.” Ugly Sisters is clearly no love letter to Greer, but it’s not exactly a vitriol-fuelled performance either. Instead, the show nods to the past while identifying how to move forward, presenting a hopeful prospect of walking into the future with agency. 

Ugly Sisters
Underbelly, Cowgate – Big Belly
18:30
Aug 17-18, 20-25