What of It?

What of It is an in-your-face role reversal visceral confrontation with three down and dirty street chav women in search of cock before the world ends in three days.  The end of the world could be true, could be rumour, could be ‘fake news’.  Whatever.  Big tall Daks’ (Emma Wright) first instinct is to be safe in a bunker.  But then what?  Bully boss leader Cory (Xanthe Blaise) figures if the world’s going to end anyway, then it’s gonna be three days living fast and hard – and anyway, their little pal Luck (Courtney Cavallaro) is not going to die a virgin… 

Interspersed with some hyper-energised (and very well done) angry choreography by Samantha Hortin, we hang out with these three women while they argue in their fast and inventively foul-mouthed way, commit theft with violence, do drugs, find random (meaningless?) shags and generally avoid thinking about the end of the world and themselves.  

But Rebecca Fingher’s text and direction allow for character development underneath or behind the aggression, the desperation and the fear.  The fear, we realise, is always there – the fear of being nothing, nobody and not mattering a damn to anyone.  As we realise this, our sympathy grows even while these are women I confess I would probably avoid on the street – or anywhere.

Luck – a fantastic performance from Courtney Cavallaro – looks at first to be the most aggressive, most scary of the three, but she’s just trying to fit in, to earn her place.  It’s a great - and moving and believable - moment when she refuses to be put down as the vulnerable one who needs help.  Emma Wright’s Daks’ just wants to dance, but her oscillations between rational and giving in to Cory’s take-no-prisoners certainties are finely judged as she tries and fails to be the mediator.  And it is Cory herself who maintains her violent aggression – her ‘toxic femininity’ - as a front against existential doubt.  She’s just holding it together – and very frightening while does.    

Rebecca Fingher reveals the psychology of these three with masterful clarity and she does it with relentlessly fast, slangy, filthy overlapping dialogue.  At the same time text and performance are challenging and provocative in having her characters behave just like stereotypical toxic males.  That indeed appears to be her intention here.  It’s terrific writing and the play is worthwhile and satisfying, but the role reversal reveals, and the fragility of these personas, might be as far as it goes in terms of story.  The characters are not a million miles from Patricia Cornelius’ characters in Shit or Love.  But the difference is that Cornelius hints at why these characters are like this – while also upping the stakes and giving us just enough plot to provide some narrative momentum. 

Here it’s the relentless energy of the performances and the heightened, poetic street talk that hold us transfixed.  What of It? is great theatre.  You can’t look away. 

Michael Brindley