Metaphora

5
Reviewer's Rating

A Woman, A Man & A Chair In An Existentialist Play With Comedy Overtones.

With fantastic acting, energetic direction and imaginative writing, “Metaphora” is an existentialist, yet humoristic play about the debates and joys of gender politics.

Part of the festival of French cutting-edge theatre “Voila!”, it is a show which allies the French and English language in a dialogue of great gymnastic prowess and panache by prolific French screen and theatre writer Danielle Ryan. Directed by TV, film and theatre actor Paterson Joseph, it puts onto the stage a woman, a man and a wide range of different sizes’ chairs which symbolise, in an insightful and comic manner, the shifting status of women in our ever evolving society. Overall, the play questions the assumption that men and women have finally reached equality and peace within the confines of the natural “plot” of the survival of the species.

Leonor Lemee and Simon Bubb do battle as Woman and Man, demonstrating an array of acting skills: from grumpy house-wife to super-sexy and irresistible seductress in a black dress and high-heel red shoes, feminist queen, military moustached super-woman, to vulnerable and hopeful soul; from happy chappy, charming singer and poet, vexed macho and rooster, vulnerable and childish boy, to world-champion footballer. Both characters play a dynamic game of attraction and repulsion, debate the pros and cons of feminist stances and arguments, and even tickle each other with a fluorescent-green leek and play “Little Piggy went to the market”. Will they both manage to reach new heights?