The Edinburgh festival is alight with talk about the patriarchy. In Triple Threat, Lucy McCormick reimagines the birth and death of Christ from a female perspective. Next week, Alice Birch’s deliciously badly behaved Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again, which pokes fun at the male appropriation of language, arrives at the Traverse. Two Man Show, the latest from RashDash, offers two women playing two men.
It begins with three women dressed as ancient goddesses in glittery gold and silver costumes giving us a squeaky-voiced history of the world. They tell us how in the move from a hunter-gatherer to agrarian society, men took power first over the goats and then over women. Towards the end, a woman playing a man harangues and blusters, using language to bludgeon.
Is maleness as much a matter of representation and performance as it is biology or nurturing? The damaged legacies that fathers pass on to their sons is explored in several soap opera-like short scenes between estranged brothers Dan and John. They are very different men and so emotionally distant it’s as if there is an ocean between them. But the brothers are simply not compelling enough; their story is too familiar and the exchanges too flat and dull.
As with all of RashDash’s work, there is a messy energy and vividness about Two Man Show, particularly in the music and dance. But for all its boldness, it is not always clear what the company want to say. Is that because language is man-made? Or maybe because the words don’t yet exist? Like the other Edinburgh shows exploring male privilege and power, Two Man Show is a halting but necessary attempt to discover them.
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At Northern Stage in Summer Hall until 27 August. Box office: 0131- 560 1581
