Merry Christmas, Ms Meadows @ Pleasance Dome

Review by Leonie Walters | 02 Sep 2014

Merry Christmas, Ms Meadows is activist theatre gone right. Belarus Free Theatre combine urgency and innovative production design in a play that is both a thing of beauty and a convincing argument that issues of gender and sexuality deserve our continued attention.

Rather than tell one story, the play explores different aspects of the history and present of LGBTQI people, both real and fictional. Every scene is a self-contained story that can be anything from the story of a real-life transgender person and the challenges they face, to a rendition of Ovid’s Hermaphrodite, to a visual interpretation of the world of Indian Hijras.

The at times theoretical content of the play is illustrated and brought to life by the visually interesting design of the scenes and the performers’ physical theatre prowess. Foucault’s take on the history of sexuality becomes all the more menacing when it is accompanied by the whizzing sound of thin canes, wielded by three intimidating bullies jumping on chairs.

Because the play is performed in Russian, most of the information is transmitted via projected surtitles, which take away from the performers’ presence. It is to their credit that the piece nevertheless manages to be informative without sounding like a lecture, and fulfills an aesthetic role as well as containing a crystal clear message.

Belarus Free Theatre: Merry Christmas, Ms Meadows, Pleasance Dome, run ended http://belarusfreetheatre.com/