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.