Direct­ed by Sara Brodie.
Writ­ten by Lori Leigh.

Uneasy Dreams and Oth­er Things is a glo­ri­ous, hilar­i­ous (in some places) piece of the­atre, inspired by Franz Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis. 

How­ev­er, instead of turn­ing into a giant bug overnight, our reluc­tant hero­ine, Saman­tha (Lydia Peck­ham), grows a penis. She spends the entire­ty of the play try­ing to deal with her new appendage, and actu­al­ly grows to like it. (While the oth­ers around her do not.)

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing con­cept to explore in a piece of the­atre, because the reac­tions of Saman­tha’s loved ones sure­ly mim­ic the reac­tions of those in the audi­ence. Saman­tha’s hus­band, Greg (Matthew Stai­jen-Leach) is repulsed — he can­not move past the change, despite lov­ing his wife — Sam’s friend Reta (Johan­na Cos­grove) is fas­ci­nat­ed — and a lit­tle turned on — and her flat­mate Fran (Arlo Gib­son) is most­ly just con­fused.

Ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, what are we? Peo­ple or parts?

Uneasy Dreams does a damn good job at mak­ing us think about it.

It’s a pow­er­ful, fem­i­nist tale of misog­y­ny, iden­ti­ty and rela­tion­ships, spiced up by 80s pop bal­lads per­formed by local band STI (Liam Kel­ly, Peter Scriv­en, with sup­port from Gib­son) — their full name has some­thing to do with insects (because of, you know, Meta­mor­pho­sis), but I’ve for­got­ten it.

A favourite scene of mine was when Reta turns up at Sam’s, a tad plas­tered, and tries to get her to have sex with her. She’s drunk, yes, but she seems to think that because Sam’s got a penis now, she’ll hap­pi­ly cheat on her hus­band and hook up with her. It’s eye-open­ing, because Sam’s caught in this mid-ground — she’s Reta’s friend, she’s not real­ly an object of sex­u­al attrac­tion to her, but she’s also got a penis (so Reta kin­da sees her as one). It’s a very unique way to look at gen­der, and I’m glad it was dis­cussed.

The whole per­for­mance feels very slick and thor­ough­ly well-con­ceived. Leigh’s char­ac­ters are well-round­ed and very strong — and the cast played their parts beau­ti­ful­ly. Excel­lent music and a strong design con­cept added to the mix.

While the dis­cus­sion of sex vs iden­ti­ty may feel a lit­tle brute force to some, I absolute­ly urge you to go and see this play. It’ll make you con­sid­er your own iden­ti­ty in anoth­er light. This play feels very, very impor­tant, and I’m sure it’ll stem many incred­i­ble con­ver­sa­tions to come.

 

Uneasy Dreams and Oth­er Things is on at Cir­ca The­atre in Welling­ton until the 27th of Octo­ber, 2018. Tick­ets are avail­able from Cir­ca’s web­site.