Run Girl Run review – a showcase of endurance
Three performers – one man, two women – arrive in neutral gym wear. Slowly, they put on boots and start walking on conveniently provided treadmills. They drink beer, banter, and apply deodorant. The first clue that something is not quite right is when Laura Hughes’ story about a broken table leg is interrupted by Clare Phillips saying briskly: “Get a new table. Get a new table.”
Gradually, blue wife-beaters are donned, beer is skulled, footy and defecation are discussed. As the treadmills roll faster, the performers’ masculinity becomes more exaggerated. Finally, they are running, sweating, thick in the plume of Old Spice, and shouting: “Man the fuck up!” It is a terrifying image of masculinity as a violent, grotesque, and yet unreachable posture.
The next round, somewhat predictably, features bras and heels, sparkling wine in tiny bottles, bra fillers and makeup. They talk about shoes, but they do not talk much, really, busy as they are trying to apply makeup, spray tan and face cream while blinded by long, blonde wigs, stumbling in high heels, movements constrained by tiny, short pink dresses.
The pace and length of the work are decided by the performers’ natural physical limits. The work stops when all three performers have literally collapsed on the ground, making terrifying gagging sounds. It is not so much that gender is performed in front of us; rather, the impossible quest to live up to normative standards is physicalised, and if it does not quite work as metaphor, it certainly works as a showcase of endurance.
Run Girl Run, by Melbourne-based Grit Theatre, sits slightly uncomfortably on the border between live art and theatre. It is a one-note work, more of a sketch than a fully developed production. It only ever makes extremely general statements, and is too messily realised to quite nail its point.
It is not entirely clear why, for example, the girls’ section starts with a much faster treadmill tempo, why the “women’’ speak so much less than “men’’, nor why “men’’ finish their race exerted, but largely composed, while “women’’ are exhausted to the point of looking ill. But it is performed with such conviction, and is so engrossing to watch, that the experience is ultimately satisfying.
Until March 16