The Exquisite Corpse… shall drink the new wine

Faye Bendrups’ program note says Greg Carroll’s set design could be ‘a dream or a reality… a boudoir or an insane asylum.’  Whatever it is, it’s a brightly lit space of dazzling white.  There are three lovely women of a certain age (writer and composer Faye Bendrups herself, Alison Richards, and Julie Dawson) all in 1920s white, seated at a table, and having a girls’ night out and a fine old time, drinking, laughing, reminiscing, winking at us, and mixing some sort of punch.  Lesley Gore sings You Don’t Own Me from the speakers.  White curtains edge the space like spiders’ webs, but it all looks too light and bright for a witches’ coven or a bacchanal.  It’s more a mix of a wedding - and wedding-cake - and first communion, with a touch of Miss Havisham thrown in. 

There’s a musical trio at the back to give the show a cabaret flavour - Guillermo Anad (viola), Dave Evans (accordion) and Nick Reynolds (double bass) - playing Kaye Bendrups’ original tunes, with a nod to Kurt Weill, to tango, and witty adaptations of re-worded songs.  (Puttin’ on the Ritz features a couple of times.)

We are, we’re told, in the ‘Horse Head Salon’ - and there’s a very weary, doddering, complaining old fellow (Eugene Schlosser), a horse’s head on his head, sits upstage with some sort of book - of his achievements? - in his lap.  Who is he?  Most of the time the three women ignore him - or tell him to shut-up.  Possibly he represents all the men these women have escaped and can now look back on with a jaundiced, sometimes angry, but sometimes an almost ironic forgiving eye.

For a show about the forgotten, sidelined, obliterated, taken for granted, over-shadowed and exploited women partners/wives/companions/muses of famous men, Exquisite Corpse is an exuberant, funny, joyful celebration of these women in narrative, song, and dance. 

The list of examples of such women is undoubtedly a very long one, but here writer Faye Bendrups has chosen Clara Schuman (was she, in fact, a better musician than Robert?), Camille Claudel (did her lover Rodin steal her ideas - and drive her mad?), Caitlin Dylan (years of putting up with an unfaithful drunk), Ella Viola Strom (helpmate of the eccentric Percy Grainger), Mary Moffat (faithtful companion of missionary and explorer Livingston), Madelaine Milhaud (thirty years of self-denial), and Leonora Carrington (companion to opportunist Max Ernst). 

Each of these historical figures, the +1 to a famous man, is played by our three women - but without bitterness or too much ostensible anger.  It’s a ‘philosophical’, ironic presentation of each one’s story - although it’s true that it’s more difficult to be detached at Camille Cordell’s thirty years in an asylum.

In its way, Exquisite Corpse is verbatim theatre.  After extensive, careful research by Faye Bendrups, Guillermo Anad, Marysia Green and Peter Green, nearly all the text comes from the diaries, interviews, records and so on of these women themselves.  The selections are pointed and individual, but at the same time representative of women of the past, or of just last week.

Exquisite Corpse is not at all what I expected.  In a literal-minded way, I expected something dark, macabre, rotting, and mysterious.  Instead, we get a show that is, yes, educational and feminist but also bright, funny, and hugely entertaining, delivered by a charming, vivacious cast. 

We all get a song sheet on the way in and at the end we join the cast - including bewildered Mr Horse Head, dragged to the front  - in lustily singing The Horse Head Salon Singalong.  Music by Faye Bendrups, 1914 lyrics by Cecily Hamilton - originally the Suffragettes anthem. 

We learn a few things and we are saddened (but not shocked - not anymore) by these tales of male entitlement, misogyny, and blithe injustice, but there are jaunty tunes and a great deal of sugar to help the medicine go down.  We leave smiling, entranced by the performers, the music, and the clever, witty theatricality of it all - and we are possibly primed no longer to ignore that woman chafing behind the ‘great man’.  The show closes on the 30^th.  Don’t miss it.

Michael Brindley   

Photographer: Darren Gill