Sanitise @ Traverse Theatre

Review by Róisín O'Brien | 09 Feb 2017

Sanitise by Jordan & Skinner is an ably performed, neatly designed performance concerned with the need for cleanliness in one woman’s life. Charged with Freudian slips (a reference used with great reluctance), the character’s obsession with hygiene soon becomes a raunchily charged stamp through perceptions of femininity and the means to contain it.

Melanie Jordan (one half of the creative duo) enters on stage grossly pulling a face, distorting her body into taut, pained positions, and shuddering at the dirtiness around her. Her sanctuary is a slick grey and white bathroom, scrubbed to the nth degree, with fluffy bath mats and one carefully placed yellow rubber duck. Jordan is a bouncing force always on her toes, swinging between repulsion and desire as she undertakes her self-imposed cleaning routine. Such contrasts prove easy for Jordan, whose expressive physicality allows for a dynamic range of emotions.

The most clearly articulated and enjoyable moment of Sanitise comes after the delivery of kinky underwear from Amazon. Through an overtly self-conscious act that sees Jordan struggle to put on and maintain a seductive air, the piece ably sketches the impositions and roles that are not endemic to women, but endemic to perceptions of femininity. That this is all tied up with ideas of filth and domesticity adds to Sanitise’s cogent sketch of certain contemporary concerns within feminism today.  

A surprise of the evening, which caters along at a sometimes trudging pace, is the inclusion of projected animations from Lubin Lone. At first whimsical and twee, they soon morph into monstrous visions of women with numerous breasts and a gaping maw between their legs.

Sanitise ends where it was always going to, with Jordan giving in and spreading dirt in as many places as possible. This induces visceral repulsion not just on Jordan’s part but on the audience’s, too. Overall, Sanitise remains within its own confines, but it is smart and astute, and nimbly performed.


Part of Manipulate festival 2017