Flesh Disease, staged at La Mama HQ, is many things. It’s a theatre performance, it’s a movement piece, it’s poetry, it’s a rumination on the lives of women and the trauma, memories and craft groups that colour those lives. At times, however, this wide scope muddies the waters, leading to a work that, while powerful, struggles to find any strong point of focus.

The premise is simple: five women sit and knit together, while their inner lives slowly bleed out and reveal themselves to the audience. Betty Auhl’s set design is simple yet effective, with long gauze-like fabric hanging from the ceiling around the stage at times obscuring the performers, suggesting that what we see on the surface may not always be the whole story. The use of projection, designed by Jenna Eriksen, is perhaps the highlight of the show. Images of rough oceans and glimpses of spiderwebs project over and around the actors, alluding to the inner turmoil of the women.

Presenting a knitting group as a spiritual meeting place for women to connect is an engaging concept; however, this premise is almost immediately cast aside, the heartfelt conversation and physical knitting both quickly disappearing in favour of convoluted movement pieces and abstract spoken word. There’s no mistaking the talent of the show’s creatives; every cast member delivers an incredible performance, and there are sections of writing from Diane Stubbings that are juicy and dark in the best possible way. The more naturalistic discussions between the women at the show’s beginning are powerful, inviting the audience into conversations that feel genuinely intimate. But the production seems to lose its way, abandoning these raw stories for messy experimental sections that fail to connect in the same way as simple, well-told stories.

The program describes the show as an exploration of mental illness; however, the show’s use of vague images and scattered words leads to a watery conclusion that fails to even identify its subject matter, let alone make any sort of statement on the topic. If the program is to be believed, these women are baring their souls to the audience. But with so much going on this vulnerability is lost, as the show struggles with being pulled in too many directions. Before we’ve had a chance to process the emotional impact of one story we’re thrown straight into another, before being thrown into a movement sequence, or overlapping stories of true crime and bake sales and swimming that leave you dizzy and without a clear understanding of any one key idea.

To be honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of experimental theatre. Or rather, I’ve often felt I’m not intelligent enough to understand it. Experimental theatre can appear inaccessible to an everyday audience, an art form saved for academics in black turtlenecks with backgrounds in acoustic hip hop dance. Granted, I’ve seen experimental shows that challenge this idea, balancing their more abstract sections with more concrete scenes that help ground the production. But Flesh Disease sadly falls into the stereotypical experimental trap: being far too fractured for me to make heads or tails of it.

There’s some excellent stuff in this show and every production element was strong in its own right. But when considering the pieces work together as whole, the show struggles find cohesion between its different parts and connect with its audience. I only wish it had realised where its strengths lie and leant into these, rather than unravelling into a confusing cliche of experimental theatre. Genuine, engaging storytelling is a rare thing and Flesh Disease has within it the potential to be an incredibly special production about some very important issues. It just needs to rethink how it spins that yarn.

Flesh Disease was staged at La Mama Theatre on March 19 and March 25.

Credits:

Concept Creation by Romi Kupfer

Writer: Diane Stubbings

Director: Romi Kupfer

Producer: RK Collaborations

Performers: Angelique Malcolm, Yoni Prior, Sasha Leong, Sonia Marcon, Lesley Coleman

Costume and Set Design: Betty Auhl

Sound Design: Simon Starr

Projection Artist: Jenna Eriksen

Production Coordinator: Jarman Oakley