Tackling the tinder-box of gender politics with flame-red fingers, the show bursts out of the gate with flamboyantly mewling, right-on feminist caricatures.

Slyly deceptive, this neat, hilarious bit of misdirection heralded a blindsiding explosion of startling choreography and music to come.

Contrasting the highest highs of feminine artistic endeavour against the most insufferable mundanities of male conversation, we’re made to wonder why women are compelled to achieve so much to be noticed in the society we find ourselves in, while men are allowed – and encouraged even – to get away with so little.

With increasingly astonishing physical and vocal performances from the cast, the show unfolds like an elaborate magic trick. The lines between male and female, actor and role, reality and fantasy blur.

subtlety frowned upon in favour of immutable opinion

Previously definitive roles and opinions disappear like smoke, as a spotlight is shone on how important conversations in the public sphere are increasingly sapped of nuance; subtlety frowned upon in favour of immutable opinion and the sugar-rush thrill of taking a side.

The truth, of course, will likely not be found exactly between two opposing points of view, and the rich, fertile space in-between is the undiscovered country explored by the engrossing, extraordinary Two Man Show.

Leigh Venus at Live Theatre, 6 October 2016

Originally published at Narc Magazine Online