How Does A Snake Shed Its Skin

Marilyn Monroe. Margaret Thatcher. Virginia Woolf.  They are, in Susanna Hislop’s estimation, “the Holy Trinity of womanhood: the brains, the brawn and the boobs.”

Hislop stands onstage as an amalgamation of this trio: blonde curls and a beauty spot, shoulder pads and a power suit, wellington boots and stone-filled pockets. “Happy birthday, Mrs Dalloway,” she coo-coo-ca-chooes, as the three become one being, one Goddesshead.

How Does A Snake Shed Its Skin is a Cassetteboy-style mash-up of their words, some public and iconic, others private; thoughts delivered into diaries, real selves kept from the world. Monroe’s depression. Thatcher’s diets. Woolf’s insecurity. All three adopt this image of womanhood, this external shell—armour—be it sex, power or feminine charm. But behind it, all of them are faltering and fragile. Hislop gives a performance of real aplomb: playing three serviceable caricatures on shuffle with fizz and folly.

Eventually, a fourth woman appears: Hislop herself, as revealed to her childhood diary. And, in it, the same concerns emerge: weight, looks, boyfriends, ambitions. Gradually, delicately, the personal starts to leak out: Hislop’s history of mixed anxiety and depression, of bipolar disorder, of OCD. It echoes these idols. They just didn’t show it.

Performed with all the off-beat humour that second-wave feminism brings to the table and no hint of shame, How Does A Snake Shed Its Skin becomes a call to arms: not militant and forthright, but honest, vulnerable and human. It calls on all of us to be ourselves, flawed as we are, so that others might follow suit.