"Unbelievable" declares Bradley, the former lover of middle-aged Cid, who has been having an affair with Cid's daughter Ginger, who has given birth to a son who Cid is bringing up as girl so that she can enter him for tap dancing competitions. Unbelievable? I'd say completely deranged. This twisted tale of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship is so preposterous, poorly constructed and lamely written that it makes you wonder how it could possibly have attracted the combined talents of directors Linda Marlowe and Josie Lawrence, and puppeteers Blind Summit.
Marlowe plays Cid, a woman who wants to relive the glories (or perhaps fantasies) of her own amateur tap dancing success through her grandson - who she has condemned to being raised as a girl in a pink nursery. Her exhibitionist but untalented daughter, Ginger, appears to have gone along with this deranged plan, but when her son is due to appear in a competition at a local shopping centre, Ginger plots her revenge on mum.
The problem here is not just the absurd turns of plot but a complete lack of consistency in the characterizations, and writer Matthew Hurt's inability to focus on what his play is about. A promising line of mother/daughter rivalry and jealousies is casually jettisoned as the two women appear to come together to take on the external threat of Bradley. But Marlowe's Cid is never monstrous enough, it's hard to tell if Marnie Baxter's Ginger is just manipulative or backward, and what might have been in the grand tradition of Mommie Dearest just comes across as limply uninvolving. Don't call the box office, call social services.
