Rhiannon Faith: Scary Shit, dance review – Essex-ed up version of Girls is bold, brave and moving

Though there's plenty of potential here it’s not yet the finished article, says Lyndsey Winship
Frank and funny: Maddy Morgan, all in black, and Rhiannon Faith, who begins the show dressed like an avant garde children’s presenter
Lyndsey Winship22 February 2016

Frank, funny and sexually upfront, Rhiannon Faith’s Scary Shit is like an Essex version of Girls, if it was set in Basildon instead of Brooklyn.

Faith has a habit of bringing real life into her work. Confessional dance theatre, you might call it. Her last piece followed dancer Maddy Morgan as she went on a series of dates. This latest, Scary Shit, has Faith and Morgan going into therapy and then making a show about it.

Sweet, petite and surrounded by pink fluffiness, Faith (at first) appears like an avant garde children’s television presenter, dressed in silver leggings, orange wig and furry pants. Black-clad Morgan is her sulking foil, with mardy face and gold spikes on her shoulders. It’s a DIY set-up, with handmade props and impromptu dances and the performers exposing their workings.

Faith is a worrier, with a fear of talking on the phone and we hear recordings of therapist Joy Griffiths guiding her through exercises to rewrite her emotional responses. Meanwhile Morgan bursts into angsty dances, in turn thrashing, twitching, bolshy and libidinous. But the playful scenes about fight or flight instincts and phobias — did you know arachibutyrophobia was the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth? — turns into something serious about sex, fertility and motherhood. And Faith’s naive demeanour belies a surprisingly filthy mouth, all cocks and fannies and f***ing and graphic depictions of unhappy sexual awakenings.

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1/9

There is a monologue about cervical smears, a period-themed poem entitled Baby Box Bloodbath and an education in Essex lingo for various body bits. You don’t normally hear this stuff on stage: the dichotomy of being an artist versus being a mother, or the grim reality of many women’s early sexual experiences.

There’s tons of potential here but it’s not yet the finished article. Scary Shit seems to start as one show and turn into another and you can see the joins. And while being totally sincere in content, there’s a layer of artifice for much of the performance that may not be the best way to serve the material — there’s somewhere deeper to go with these real emotions, as opposed to the stagey ones. But beneath the (intentional) scrappiness this is a bold and brave performance, especially from Morgan, and it grows into to something searingly honest and genuinely moving.

Next performed February 26 to 27 at The Pleasance, N7 (020 7609 1800, pleasance.co.uk)

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