F*cking Ancient

What do you do when forced to remain in lockdown over the past year or so? Create a world premiere online one-woman comedy of course. Performer and writer Maggie McCormack created F*CKING ANCIENT, inspired by her very personal exploration of the age we live in and our obsession with youth culture – which the pandemic forcing us to spend endless hours online has only served to reinforce – as Maggie says: "Being on Zoom and working from home, and looking at ourselves on screen all day!"

As it stands, F*CKING ANCIENT is a mix of laugh-out-loud situation comedy, rom-com, and stream-of-conscious stand-up riffing on the writer/performer's current obsessions, plus the reality of working as a podiatrist with older patients who overshare their personal histories. Some streams works better than others. Exhausted from yet another session of 'hot yoga' Maggie falls asleep in the middle of a YouTube rabbit hole binge into the murky world of body reshaping and cosmetic procedures: the nightmarish montage and her spluttering wake-up scream of 'designer vagina!' is hilarious. And the revealing language around women's bodies and the fight to remain 'body positive' is often as poetic as it is hilarious. We have: crow's feet, deep forehead wrinkles, lumpy body, muffin top, hairpiece hiding untamed hair, lipo, fat reduction, tummy tuck, breast implant 'freshies', pesky upper-knee fat, eroding and corroding, ageing and greying. Her search to make peace with herself includes an interlude with an off-screen male relaxation treatment therapist who entices her with 'Well, Missy!' and 'Wake up, Sleeping Beauty' before ripping her off to the tune of hundreds of dollars worth of herbal supplements, and an encounter with a younger man via an online dating app.

It is all good but sparse material, and when the source of Maggie's exploration of ageing and defying death is revealed to come from a much closer personal trauma – a family tragedy combined with her work with older women – the script meanders and just needs a little reining in. The juxtaposition of being close to death plus youth obsession is something I haven't seen before and really lies at the heart of the piece. And it would be rewarding to look into this in more detail, maybe with fewer characters but more screen time for each segment. There's something there, but currently vying for attention are scenes looking at the usual suspects of botox, liposuction and breast implants, images of ageing woman as crazy old crones, punishing exercise routines, online dating, and the constant stress, as Maggie puts it, of "I feel like I'm failing at life because I'm ageing!"

Inspired by her own obsessions with anti-ageing, Maggie McCormack collaborated with her former Drama School friend and performer/director, Ngaire Dawn Fair (Red Stitch Ensemble), to create on online performance piece during the pandemic. They edited the piece together in Los Angeles where Ngaire is based, just as travel restrictions were lifted recently. There is some great sound work by actor/producer Ben Prendergast (while some edits are a little jarring) and some appropriately spiritual and relaxing music by Shahead Mostafafar and Matt Stewart-Evans. This is a collaborative team to watch out for in the future. And I'm sure that once F*CKING ANCIENT decides what it really wants to be, it will be honed to perfection. But the current strength of this piece is as a showcase of Maggie's performance range and ability to entertain for an hour-long one-woman show.

Beth Keehn

Find out more: https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/f-cking-ancient-af2022

Photos supplied by Maggie McCormack

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