My Female Husband @ Old Red Lion Theatre Pub - Review
An emotive queer pantomine in purgatory, a flinch takes the edge off an otherwise impeccable tragedy. - ★★★★
Runs until 24th August 2024 at the Old Red Lion Theatre Pub, Angel.
Tickets now on sale for one night only at Greenwich theatre: https://greenwichtheatre.org.uk/events/myfemalehusband
Tickets £10/15.
Rating: ★★★★
An astounding first play from Tomboy Productions, My Female Husband is billed as a courtroom drama, but it’s so much more than that. It is a play within a play with a mysterious and subtle frame narrative.
A husband, played by Frank Bertoletti, and wife, Katie Driver, are in a courtroom, or a theatre, or somewhere outside our understanding. Throughout the hour or so we have together, the characters stage a costume-switching production of their own marriage ending, with polish that slowly unravells from a charming amateur production to a futile attempt to rewrite a plot that has already happened.
It is left to our interpretation why they have to do this, and why they continue despite begging one another for reprive. To me it felt like a depiction of a purgatory, two people forced to suffer with their sins until they repent, though those sins are naturally not the ones Georgian England condemned. It could be viewed less metaphysically- couples therapy, a humiliating punishment from an off-stage judge- but regardless the mystery is part of its charm.
The narrative within a narrative is executed so perfectly that the mystery does not turn into confusion. It’s clear at every stage whether one or two layers of acting are occuring, even when a sibling fight turns effortlessly into romantic foreplay. This is a credit to both leads, but especially to Bertoletti, able to switch in a second from flirtatious prostitute to openly misogynistic judge while doing both roles the appropriate, semi-realistic justice.
Despite the evident low budget, costuming is well done, and the total lack of scenery makes sense with the established narrative. Casting and role allocation is fantastic, especially the choice for the husband to depict the prostitute and the wife to depict her own father, eliminating any sense of madonna-whore narratives or freud’s ghost.
A real tragedy of the piece is that these (fictional, but reality-inspired) characters are flawed in ways we recognise. The passion has waned in a marriage, one spouse is not included enough in decisions. It’s a narrative we are familiar with in heterosexual media, where it is a domestic and interpersonal issue, not one that ends in the courts or public lashings. The narrative also does a fantastic job in avoiding ascribing modern identities to these characters- the husband is Cassandra Henry, or Henry Cassandra; the wife is attracted to women; pronouns are changed throughout. We don’t need to be told if this is a transgender play or a lesbian one to understand it, and leaving it open wonderfully acknowledges the fluidity of queer identities while allowing viewers to relate to it without alienation.
My one gripe is the ending. We are provided the perfect closing scene to this tragedy, the wife alone in the space desperately and pleadingly repeating lines to the audience… but then there is more play. It feels like an attempt at a happy ending has been tacked on to the end, which provides no closure and blunts the emotional impact of an otherwise truly world-class work. We know this can’t end well, the ending has been written, seeing them re-write it just feels like poor audience appeasement.
Despite tackling homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and the violence of the justice system with remarkable depth and precision, My Female Husband lives up to Tomboy’s aim of producing fun, queer theatre. It is extremely playful and experimental, evoking pantomime throughout without a second of cringe.
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Loved your review. I agree - a stunning piece of theatre. But I contest your view of the ending. This was surely a flashback to their wedding night: juxtaposing the tragic ending with the tender beginning of their marriage, and revealing the wife's claim to have been deceived as false. We had assumed this all along, but this flashback, beautifully lit in sunny tones, full of joy and hope for the future serves to underline the cruelty of the consequences of their love.