Anna Burnside reviews a production with good intentions that doesn't quite work.
What do Britney Spears, Lady Macbeth and Australian performer Leah Shelton’s grandmother have in common? They have all been pathologised as mad.
This is Shelton’s jumping off point for a theatrical essay putting Gwen’s horrendous but all-too-common story into context. Batshit is directed by Ursula Martinez and brings her highly coloured aesthetic and physicality to the storytelling.
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It opens with Shelton, in a gorgeously frothy green evening gown, opera gloves and surgical gag, wielding an axe with one wildly overextended arm. This is a running theme through the show - at one point in the 1960s, Gwen chopped up the family’s TV set. The reasons for this, which are all too obvious to a 2024 audience with only the briefest introduction to her case notes, bewildered everyone at the time.
Onstage, the big old telly in the corner springs into life with period footage from old Australian news shows and contemporary vox pops about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
Women, as the internet’s treatment of Heard made clear, are still being pathologised in the same way as Gwen, who was lonely, isolated and had lost a newborn baby. But the show, which is just 50 intense minutes, makes heavy weather of the subject.
The pacing is off, the opening number too long, the TV interludes repetitive, an audience participation section unnecessary. There’s a great show to be made about Gwen - and Amber and Britney and the full rollcall of mistreated women that form the show’s finale. This is not it.
Batshit performs at the Traverse Theatre until August 25, 2024. Check the theatre’s website for specific performance times.
Photo by Cecilia Martin.
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