The Butterfly Club is the atmospheric venue for feminist writer Judy Doubas’s latest work, Femme Play (ungrateful slut) playing until May 31 as part of the Drama Queen Festival.
Well-directed by Susan Rundle, Femme Play is a modern-day exploration of female identity vs. the patriarchy – by socially conscious Al (a delightful performance from Gabby Llewelyn), and career-woman George, expressively portrayed by Ruth Katerelos.
We meet Al wearing a pink fairy-like tutu with wand, reflecting on her inner girl child dreams which conflicted with parental expectations; She now wants to become liberated.
George laments that after quitting her 20-year career, she has been reduced to being remembered merely for her shoes in the male-dominant work environment.
The clever addition of two inner voices – grounded patriarchal mouthpiece Red (June Collins) and glamorous voice for femininity Bling (Rosie Rodiadis), not only adds an interesting dimension to the play itself but confuses Al and George even more as they struggle for self-identity as females.
Social commentary includes questioning the effectiveness of the 1970s Women\u2019s Lib Movement when 50 years later, Al still doesn\u2019t know what she wants, believing the world continues to abide by men\u2019s rules.
The enjoyable duologue between Al and George discussing women\u2019s equality with men and misogyny, provides a good showcase for Katerelos and Llewelyn\u2019s naturalistic acting skills.
The show has a positive message at the end, and whilst there might not be any new revelation raised about female identity vs. the patriarchy, playwright Doubas explores the issues from an interesting contemporary perspective.
The Drama Queen Festival gives opportunities for female voices to be heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Femme Play achieves this, with song, humour and choreographed moves adding a fun, light-hearted vibe to a thought-provoking topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Performance Season: May 29 at 8:30pm, May 30 and 31 at 5:30pm<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Venue: The Butterfly Club, 5 Carson Place (off Lt Collins), Melbourne (CBD)
Tickets: $45 Full,| $40 Concession, $38 Member
Bookings: thebutterflyclub.com\/show\/femme-play-ungrateful-slut or 9663 8107.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Door sales available<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Duration: 60mins. Disabled access is not available for this venue at present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Review by Cheryl Threadgold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Butterfly Club is the atmospheric venue for feminist writer Judy Doubas’s latest work, Femme Play (ungrateful slut) playing until May 31 as part of the Drama Queen Festival.Well-directed by Susan Rundle, Femme Play is a modern-day exploration of female identity vs. the patriarchy – by socially conscious Al (a delightful performance from Gabby Llewelyn),…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"none","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-observer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8524,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519\/revisions\/8524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}