An Ungrateful Woman

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Written by Jay Richardson in WOW 24/7 on August 8th, 2014

Bridget Christie truly found her metier with the “feminist epiphany” that attended her seeing a man farting in the women’s section of a bookshop. Yet as she makes clear, with no little exasperation, women’s rights aren’t just flavour of the month with her.

Beset by images of bikini models with their legs splayed and cultural commentators who believe women should thank their lucky stars they don’t live in Saudi Arabia, she’s waging an ongoing battle against the forces of patriarchy, to the detriment of an acting career that forswears commercials with stereotypical portrayals.

At the heart of this show is an account of the yoghurt ad she stubbornly rejected because of its overt sexism, developing an entertaining froth of incredulity at the bizarre messages it conveyed. And she sustains this sardonic, bristling contempt through countless expressions of misogyny, right up to and including female genital mutilation.

Regrettably, it’s not just the government and Steve Davis who aren’t helping her though, by not quite being the chauvinists she imagined. An Ungrateful Woman lacks the finesse of last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award triumph. For all its passionate polemic, this feels like a series of arguments accumulated over 12 months rather than a concrete, coherent show.

Written by Jay Richardson in WOW 24/7 on 8th August 2014.
Filed Under: An Ungrateful Woman, Review

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