The Pyjama Girl
Devised and performed by Ladykillers
Vitalstatistix in association with Adelaide Festival Centre inSpace program.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
December10. Tickets $18 – $25. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until December 19.
In a week when there has been much discussion about gender representation in Australian theatre, we should remember Adelaide-based company, Vitalstatistix, has marked twenty five years of women doing it for themselves. As part of their current season they have programmed The Pyjama Girl, a new work, five years in the making, for the artful ensemble Ladykillers.
Original members – director Ingrid Voorendt, composer Zoe Barry and performer Astrid Pill (joined on stage by the capable Jo Stone and Stephen Sheehan) revive the disturbing story of the 1934 Albury murder, where an unidentified (and unidentifiable) woman’s body was found, dressed in yellow pyjamas, her face obliterated by kerosene burns. The mystery victim was embalmed and displayed in Sydney in the hope of solving the crime. Thirteen years later she was named, and her husband charged with the murder, but many weren’t convinced the case was closed.
The Pyjama Girl alludes to these events, and the doubts about its resolution are represented by two women dressed in canary yellow – one married to a bland, but cruelly menacing husband, the other, like a nameless and lost wraith, a woman forever at the wrong place and the wrong time. There are plenty of film noir signatures – retro microphones for masochistic torch songs, bakelite radios, Dragnet fedoras and ankle strap shoes. Starkly lit by Andrew Gadsden, designer Gaelle Mellis’s decor uses a huge backdrop on to which is projected a Weegee-style tabloid-flash crime scene photo, this later falls away to reveal a sinister nocturnal waste land.
The production is a series of sketches and explorations – ambivalent songs, misogynist jokes, stories told like urban myths, an A-Z of dead women jauntily described in alliterative press headlines, and dialogues (many written by Kathryn Fyffe) revealing the mixed sexual signals between men and women. It uses movement and dance set to thirties jazz, with notable echoes of Kontakthof-period Pina Bausch and Lloyd Newson’s DV8. It explores the fine line between fantasy and danger, between play and cruelty, and between eros and death.
This is very ambitious territory to cover in sixty minutes and, at times, segments resemble workshop exercises. But, the final section – with its recitation of clichés which blame the victim (and all women for their fates), its haunting use of Zoe Barry’s music, and the abject presence of the naked female form – strongly reminds us that crime writing and popular media has de-sensitised us with all that Pulp Fiction and Wire in the Blood. In its wit and stylish conviction, you could say The Pyjama Girl is a wake-up call.
Murray Bramwell