This review contains spoilers.
In the foyer of Flies, you are presented with a Polaroid camera and invited to take a photo to add to the wall. You are encouraged to share your photo with the hashtag #WhatAreYouLookingAt. Without the benefit of a screen showing what your selfie looks like before it develops, you are already primed to think about how you present yourself, how you are perceived – and how easily your control over your own image can slip through your fingers.
Flies opens on seven young women hugged together in the centre of a white paper backdrop, positioned as if in the middle of a photoshoot, cameras pointed at them from different sides and directly above. They are all dressed differently, but deliver a monologue as one. The words jump from person to person, telling the same story – of growing up perceived female and how the world treats you because of your assigned gender. Without missing beats, the monologue flows from person to person, with some of the key moments lent amplification by multiple voices joining in to speak.
The experiences of being observed, sexualised, minimised are painfully relatable. Seeing them delivered simultaneously from multiple different voices highlights how universal they are. The message becomes all the more profound when you can’t help but notice stories of being aggressively sexualised are shared equally between the woman in a mini skirt and the one in a polo shirt that looks worryingly like a school uniform.
The monologue morphs into a scene as the characters slip into their unique roles. They are a theatre group, discussing the dearth of leading female roles. They list a seemingly endless array of male characters created by male writers. They lament how the roles designed to showcase a performer’s talents are centred around men, how few iconic monologues are designed to show what these women are capable of.
The discussion flows into other issues women face – exclusion, objectification, discrimination. Over the course of the play, Flies directly confronts a huge number of problems that are excruciatingly relatable. The sheer number of painful topics is a weight in itself.
Each subject is handled slightly differently. Equally delicately, but with more attention offered to those that need it.
Sometimes, the women are already on the same page – they raise the issue at hand, they vent about it, they move swiftly on. Other times, further discussion is required to reach a place where they can comfortably move on, maybe not always in total agreement but still firmly on the same side.
There is a long conversation centred on internalised misogyny, with a range of reactions to one woman’s admission that there is a part of her that likes the comments, even though she knows they are inappropriate. Some of her peers are enraged, but they are encouraged to show understanding, to work through the influences that have led her to feel this way, to in some way judge her own worth based on reactions men have to her appearance.
At times, Flies breaks out of being a play and speaks explicitly in the writer’s voice. Characters begin sentences with “The writer thinks…”, “The writer needs to work through this…”, “The writer wants to ask you…” The show is direct and unsubtle, asking specific questions about what is normal and why.
There is no ambiguity about what you are expected to think about, no room to misinterpret the things the writer wants to challenge.
Cameras loom over them the whole time, simply watching, indifferent to their suffering. Screens at corners of the stage play videos of scenes that highlight the subject of the discussion. They offer examples of the way that women are objectified in the media – in music videos and movies and adverts. They act as a reminder that, while the women on stage examine and reject the many expectations placed on them by their gender, there are reminders splashed everywhere they look that this is how they should be, this glamorous and beautiful and obedient.
The show is not all misery, though. The conversations have joy and laughter woven around them from start to finish. At times, even the discussions about their problems are heavy with laughter, they joke about the ridiculousness of purity culture, the absurdity of the beauty standard. They cope through humour, even when they brush up against the darker end of each subject.
These women are resilient. They are very capable of getting on with happy, fulfilling lives despite the barrage they face every day.
Integral to this resilience is how supportive of each other they are. When one woman swaps out of her dress and into a business suit, the others celebrate her success. They are gentle with each other when they don’t see eye to eye. They are patient when someone needs help unlearning damaging attitudes or understand how some issues impact others differently.
The entire play is punctuated by dances, with choreography infused with joy, highlighted by how in sync all these women are – and how their connections with each other are at the very core of them being at their happiest.
But looming over them the entire time are those cameras. The white uniform box that makes for their stage is a cage. Whenever one of them gets too close to the edge, an abrupt sense of fear descends. If someone reaches out to pick something up, or looks like they might cross the line during a dance, everyone else clusters around to pull them back.
They have a lot of problems in their cage, where they are watched, where their behaviour is monitored and controlled by a judgement patriarchal eye, but to step outside of that box is all the scarier still. To dare to challenge the status quo has unknown consequences and it is easier to trust the devil they know. At least, in there, they can dance some of the time.
Finally, they break free. One stumbles out of the square and there are no immediately consequences. She pushes away the camera. They erupt into an orgy of destruction and colour. They dance, they scream, they splash paint over the white stage, they dress however they want to dress – a mixture of glamorous and dirty and silly. They throw around video tapes and slam the laptops closed – they rob the tools that have oppressed them of their power. They have been freed, suddenly and unexpectedly, from the male gaze.
Until the only man in the play stands up.
Silently, he clears away some of the mess they have made. He rights the camera so that it is pointing at them again. And he leaves.
He leaves them – and us – stuck with the realisation that, short of tearing down structures far larger than ourselves, freedom can only ever be fleeting.
Flies covers a huge amount of discourse in the space of one concise play. It does not obscure its meaning or pull its punches. It is relatable in ways you wish it wasn’t even as you are watching it. It captures the universal experiences of womanhood and femininity, of how the world treats you even from childhood when you are perceived female. It teases apart the internal conflict you go through when you have to unlearn all the things society has spent your formative years insisting you should be. It rages against the struggle it is to forge space for yourself in a world that caters predominantly to men. It is a powerful play that expertly navigates a world that is chaotic and unfair and painful.
Flies is running at Shoreditch Town Hall from Wednesday 22nd February until Saturday 11th March.
Find out more about Boundless Theatre by checking out their website. You can keep up with their work by following them on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Read our interview with actor Ellie Rose about her experience performing in Flies here.
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