The script and score of this show being an award-winning Off-Broadway musical, I don’t want to spend time on the story itself or the writing, both of which are easily searchable on the internet – e.g. here. And here is the media release synopsis:

“Described as a ‘musical fairytale’ it centres around Zanna, a love fairy, whose job is to find people with ‘extra love’ and pair them with their perfect match. Guys with the guys and girls with the girls, nothing could be more perfect! That is until two rebel opposite-sex Heartsville High students create a storm of heterophobia by falling in love. It’s up to Zanna to ‘make the world safe for heterosexuals’, but what cost will he pay to create a safe world in which his friends can love in peace?”

I feel first obligated to provide the following disclaimer: I am a straight woman. Please take everything I say with that grain of salt.

Speakeasy Theatre has found a strong cast for this show and they all do admirably well on opening night in the face of a large number of technical difficulties. The three women in particular (Janelle Pollock, Katie Evans and Hannah Bain) are fantastic, gutsy and experienced singers, and even pull off a couple of tunes designed for the vocal range of African-American women with great aplomb, proving that white people can nearly sing too.

The uncredited choreography, like nearly everything in the show, is cute and fun, with Josh Hopton-Stewart’s dancing standing out strong. The scene with the two cowboys Bronco and Tex is a highlight. The hidden band is great although it would be nice to have them out for the curtain call.

With costumes by Jesse Finn, the show is colourful and lovely to look at, the aesthetic reminding me a lot of the Sami Sisters video ‘Oh Boy’. Many scenes are composed with the sort of framing you would expect from a photographer.

On to my quibbles.

The show initially represents an alternate world which is a safe place for gay people and a dangerous place for straight people. Being a musical theatre piece of comedy, with light pop music, a large part of the satire on heterosexual ideas of normality is devoted to the overuse of traditional stereotypes. I have no problem with this. Stereotyping is an established area of satire, but why then, in this safe haven for all homosexuals and in this overly stereotyped universe, does the whole thing come off looking like a gay man’s paradise?

Where is the stereotyping of gay women? Instead, in this show, the gay men are dressed like gay men and the women are too! The guys act like effeminate girls and the girls act like air-headed fag hags from a cheaper Sex and the City rip-off. The men say “Let’s go shopping” and the girls shriek, “Yay!” The men worry about the size and shape of their booties and so do the women, wearing high heels and clothes conforming to the stereotypical straight idea of hotness, i.e. the objectified female that typically appeals to straight men.

As I said before, I am a straight woman. I do not know what this show looks like to a gay woman, but I would be surprised if a lesbian’s idea of ‘hot’ directly conforms to that of a straight man. I know that my personal feminist idea of hot doesn’t always conform to the straight male ‘hot’, but also that it is extremely hard to get away from the male gaze we’re constantly surrounded by and which we’ve had shoved down our throats since infancy, and that quite often my idea of ‘hot’ truly does conform to the male gaze shot images I’ve been force-fed my whole life. Should it be any different for a gay woman or a gay man to perceive women this way? Do we have any other choice? I don’t know. And yet, the whole concept of the show is to subvert and reverse the norms. So, surely …?

The script was written by a man, the male cast of this show are all gay, the three women on the other hand, appeared to be straight-in-real-life. I don’t know if those factors have anything to do with it, or they needed more female dramaturgy, but I certainly feel there is room in the script for lesbian stereotyping, for butch women in work-shirts and masculine haircuts, and that many of the aspects I take issue with come from design and directing choices, rather than from the script itself.

Sure, not all lesbians are breast-binding bois, but neither are all gay men camp, limp-wristed, fluttery, fairy characters with falsetto voices. If the point is to play on stereotypes, then take it all the way!

Perhaps it’s also to be expected that when some of the men in the cast need to play women, their physicality suddenly turns into drag-queen acting, again, the heightened, exaggerated idea of ‘female’ with much chest-thrusting and hair flicking that bears no correlation with real life women, and even less correlation to stereotypical lesbian women. Would the gay male community have felt let down without a few drag queen moments in a musical fairy tale? Possibly. But would I have felt let down by a universe-inconsistency? Or as a woman?

The character Roberta in particular has a lot to work with and some great lines, but this interpretation of the reversed universe doesn’t really bring them out and leaves them as mostly token-nod-to-lesbians moments – one a “You dissin ma woman?” line, another a quick scene of Roberta giving her guy friend a piggyback.

 (Is this still the gay man’s idea of an ideal lesbian? One that is such a good mate she gives him piggybacks?) And of course, there is a throw-away joke from another character about knitting combat booties for a baby girl.

Maybe lesbians aren’t into musical theatre, as a friend suggested, but in a community as small as Wellington, I would be expecting them to come along and support both the show and the upcoming generation regardless. (I would also have expected a show that is essentially the Marriage Amendment Bill’s after party to have been packed out for opening night.) The story is hilarious, the jokes are great, I would expect that lesbians are going to be enjoying the show as much as me. I’m not a big fan of musical theatre either! So what?

As a feminist, and from a city in which every second gay man professes to be the biggest feminist I’ve met to date and yet at the same time is telling me, “Get those boobs up a bit, honey, you’ll never get a man that way,” I felt both disappointed and unsurprised that a male’s idea of a gay paradise is one in which all the women are caricatures of straight girls but with no sexual interest in men.

Despite my feminist griping, the show is great, and while the fantastic cast was sadly let down by the technical issues on opening night, I have no doubt it will be well worth seeing on future nights and that even women of any orientation will laugh out loud!

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