People Zoo Productions are a Manchester-based theatre company with a wide range of activities from children’s theatre to helping non-native speakers learn English. The company’s offering for this year’s Manchester, Buxton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes is a female two-hander exploring gender stereotyping. Appearing at first glance to be a comic foray into political theatre, it is actually and most refreshingly, anything but. It is very, very funny and remarkably educational. A feminist rant it most certainly isn’t although it does start with the interesting supposed premise that the ‘patriarchy’ only started once we ceased to be hunter-gatherers, which is to say the least, questionable.
There has been a plethora of feminist comediennes using their own life stories or social observations to moan feminist oppression, female pigeon-holing and differences between the sexes. So much so, that it’s hard to imagine either an original angle or original material and yet People Zoo Productions have achieved both and in so doing, created something quite different. ‘Men Chase, Women Choose’ is actually a devised piece, created by the performers Sophie Giddens and Eve Shotton with Matt Holt (so there has been some male input into this!). Credit must also be given to Kate Coogan for tight direction.
‘Men Chase, Women Choose’ is essentially a historical journey about how scientists have regarded women and in particular sex and sexuality from a female perspective. It just happens that almost all of these scientists happen to be men. The frequently yelled catchphrase of the show is ‘Bad Science’, but on every occasion the reason why it’s bad is convincingly and amusingly expounded.
What really sets this show apart is the non-stop, frenetic pace with (for the most part) one of the girls (assuming you still can refer to a grown woman acting in a feminist play as a ‘girl’) adopting a calm, scientist’s persona juxtaposed to her co-performer who is bouncy and in-yer-face, questioning everything. All this is frequently punctuated with quick-fire sketches, photographic illustrations and film snippets, usually to the accompaniment of dance or physical gestures by the actors. In so doing, they display an impressive range of accents as well. The only time they allow themselves any respite is to show a quick film of themselves attempting to demonstrate a scientific point by synchronised swimming (in perhaps deliberately fetching red swimsuits). There are also some aspects which can only be described as absurd theatre but remember this is a play about women, sex and science, although not necessarily in that order, so be prepared to expect the unexpected.
Behind the cleverly constructed comedy, there is impeccable research which puts a lot of scientists, from Darwin to Freud, into a new light, showing how much of their research, experiments and conclusions were coloured by societal norms and (usually by men) commonly held assumptions. The show concludes with a neat summing up of a modern, more realistic approach to women, from a societal perspective in general and sexual perspective in particular which will actually make not just women but men as well a lot happier. It comes over ultimately not as a rant or even an exposé but really just a common sense look at how we’ve come to where we are and what we can do about it. A very funny, very clever show, executed by two very talented and versatile performers. This show gets a special recommendation to catch it while you can!
Reviewer - John Waterhouse
on - 10/7/19
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