The transgender world is, to me, an out-and-proud lesbian and mother of four, like music. From country & western angst to the Olympian reaches of Mozart and Chopin.  The remarkable Slow Burlesque embraces all of these.

Preparing to review it, I first researched the name of its creator, which was a pleasant journey in itself.

Freya Silas Finch.

A solid name, packed with meaning, Freya is that very multi-talented Teacher-Being of the North who governs everything from love to war. Very handy in small populations. Silas, apart from everything else, is a roadmap in English, having slithered and softened to here from Sylvanus, (forests, trees), itself birthed from more ancient Hebraic or Aramaic texts, I’m not sure which. In Canada and the US, Silas is an icon for straw-chewing wisdom. So, to date, the name always connects to nature, with a distinct meaning of trees, forest places. Finch, charming songbird of many climes, in the wrens-and-robins size field. Smaller birds sing the sweetest, says the Bard, which the tui gives lie to.

Elephant Publicity’s provocative ads made me think Slow Burlesque possibly could be a quick-change artist sort of performance, which the brilliant Jacob Rajan began here with Krishna’s Dairy. Researching that gave me the knowledge that the holder of today’s quick-change artist record is a Portuguese woman, Solange Kardinaly. Ms Kardinaly currently holds the Guinness Book of Records record for the most changes in a minute – twenty five. So, I feel quite prepared as My Companion and I slide through a happy crowd outside the Basement’s so-flexible theatre space.

Front-row seats put me close to the performance. The set, cleverly devised by Talia Pua, supports the performer brilliantly. A modest plinth is a room, a bed, a couch. Strewn about with garments and indeterminate pieces of fabric, the plinth rests on a carpet with a faded, pinkish pattern.

We are in someone’s home. And we are welcomed in.

This production – and the Performer – engages its audience totally, with the Performer regularly bringing the audience into the action, whether by asking for a garment to be zipped up or to tossing over a scarlet stocking. At one delightful point, the Performer actually becomes the audience, sitting in one of the side seats, wearing white fur and very dark, and glamorous shades.

What an entertaining way to make clear that we are all players in the drama of Life, all players here, and many with new perspectives, now understandings, of what it means to be human.

“Something to think about,” as the Performer softly says at salient points throughout the riveting performance. 

In the first few minutes, the Performer reveals that “some days I feel I have no gender, that I am every gender…” Deep truth, freshly spoken aloud, and as priceless as the Hope Diamond.  

The narrative is both witty, funny and deep, in the way that overtly superficial things like pyjamas and socks can be. Its staging enlarges, with the Performer working both offstage and through the audience – again, engaging us by making us keep an eye on them, often in ways which make our packed audience of mostly pākeha Bright Young Things roar with laughter.

Slow Burlesque displays its long development into top class theatre. As a lover of the theatre for what it can teach me – oh, so pleasantly – I thank Freya Silas Finch for so compellingly bringing me into the heart of a trans Person’s world. The play deserves to become a classic, like Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which so-daringly (for its time) exposed marital truths.

I particularly like the hilarious Space Person section of the narrative, which credits Alien Beings for, among much else, the game of cricket. “You’ve got to be or not to be,” declares the Performer, neatly segueing into quoting Hamlet. “Something to think about” hangs in the air.

As we were leaving, I ask my Companion whether Slow Burlesque (at the Basement until 19^th October) mirrored any points in her journey to recognising and living her lesbian reality. “No,” she says, adding that by the time she was an adult, being lesbian was seen as rather chic, in the middle class pākeha world. After all, “there are no winners in this two-sided game we are playing,” as Freya Silas Finch puts it in finale. “Whose pain is harder, mine or yours?”

And we realise through the simplicity of these words, that above all, we are all human, and all of value, no Person left out.

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