Reclaim the Crone

The title makes the intent and purpose of this show absolutely clear.  The play begins in darkness with an angry poem projected on the walls and on three huddled women.  It’s a protest at the invisibility of older women.  Women of a certain age will recognise this at once: so disregarded that they are almost literally invisible in public spaces – so that younger individuals will bump into them or force them off the pavement and into the gutter.  It’s not just their bodies: the invisibility extends to their life experience, sexuality, opinions and wisdom.  Later, a representative of the patriarchy (Frank van den Ven) will tap threateningly with a patriarch’s staff while enumerating the many terms by which ‘old women’ are dismissed – one of which is the slightly sinister ‘crone’, which is not far from ‘witch’. 

Of course, it’s not just the ‘patriarchy’.  It’s also the worship of the new, of youth, of cliches of what constitutes beauty that conspire to dismiss older women.

Reclaim the Crone resists and defies this dismissal, this relegation to invisible and irrelevant and it celebrates the older female body too, proceeding with most expressive tableaux, Butoh dance, poetry, chanting, projections on a huge cyclorama and on sheets when, in a ritual sequence, the women hang the washing on a clothesline.  A charming sequence near the start has the three ‘crones’ come to life in black cloaks - but over brilliant red frocks and stockings - remove their red shoes.  As they sigh relief they recite ‘I Take Off My Shoes’.  Then, lying on their backs on the floor, their raised legs in the red stockings wave, come together and open, performing a kind of dance that expresses physicality and sensuality.  Again, there is another layer; it’s not just shoes, it’s release from constriction and reconnection with earth, nature and air.

Although, however, the play culminates in a sequence of death and the Earth’s waste and destruction, its assembly of items and elements – some expressive, some beautiful, some puzzling - feels at times random.  Norman Skipp’s sound design is strong, evocative and appropriate, but it often overpowers the spoken words and so those words are lost. 

But the show wants to argue that the ‘superpowers’ of wise old women are ‘connected to being in touch with nature’s wisdom and Mother Earth.’  It wants to remind us of ancient connections, of fertility rituals, of females as the source of life – even perhaps of prehistory matriarchies.  Today these are bold and sweeping assertions.  (No doubt we can all think of some older women decidedly not in touch with Mother Earth.)  There is much here that works strongly, but there are also empty – if hopeful – claims.

Curiously, what otherwise seems to weaken Reclaim the Crone is when it comes down to earth, so to speak, and images and voices of real old women are projected on those sheets on the clothesline.  Logically one can’t argue with this but suddenly the heightened reality, the mysticism and the poetry are shattered.  It really shouldn’t be so, but in this sequence the work becomes banal. 

And then it goes on two beats too long – and becomes avowedly preachy.  It should have stopped at a perfect ending that’s already there.  One of the crones, now a dutiful housewife (Karen Berger) is glumly sweeping the floor.  Suddenly she stops, puts the broom between her legs and, with a cheeky grin, takes off.  Surely that’s a fine metaphor to end this show and its argument.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Leonie Van Eyke