Travesti

Prior to the Edinburgh Fringe, a sustained debate on attitudes to sexual identity and feminism manifested itself, rather grotesquely, in the lyrics of Robin Thicke. The addition of painstaking confrontations over Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian—exchanges that have been notably tortured on Twitter—confined discussion to the obligations of pop culture.

Director Rebecca Hill seeks to obliterate the male apathy surrounding everyday sexism in Travesti: a conversation that for a long time was still chaired by men. After interviewing what she described as ordinary women, Hill took their words and handed them to a cast of six men to perform. The resulting role-reversed verbatim piece riffs on the sexualisation and unrelenting objectification of women today – from nightclub groping to outright rape.

It’s clear how hard Hill has struggled to get the balance between comedy and tragedy correct. The piece is often hilarious, leaning on the silliness of six men playing women. There’s something quite troubling however about the comedy: as if it trivialises the subject matter. It's satire with a sobering message, about presentation, confidence and socialisation, but the ensemble play for laughs in an uncomfortably direct manner.

Of course, the very fact that it is camp and breezy allows Hill to wallop us with moments of real alarm and distress. A detailed vision of threatening behaviour when a woman gets on a bus full of hostile men exhibits how many women feel the need to suppress their fear. Perhaps, however, a deeper assessment of patriarchy as opposed to straightforward self-image would expose an even greater and more pressing inequality.