The Dame Show (work in progress) review at Reclaim Festival

Belinda Dillon sees the funny side in a show about women’s health.

Back in April, theatremakers Marina O’Shea, Primrose Bigwood and Lizi Bennett invited women to attend a workshop to talk about the challenges of navigating the healthcare system. What they heard – and obviously drawing on their own lives and experiences – has become The Dame Show: a riotous game show-style piece where the grand prize is… women’s health!

Comprising sketches, skits and original songs, it’s frenetic, loud and undeniably fun – all underpinned by the shocking (and frankly exhausting) reality of systemic misogyny encountered by the majority of women regarding their health. From trying to get your GP to take your cripplingly painful periods seriously (“have you tried to lose weight?”) to the widespread ignorance of and disregard for menopause symptoms (“it’s probably anxiety – here’s some antidepressants”), the frustrations are myriad.

This is a show in development, so still quite raw and scrappy in places, but there is gold in there. The songs are brilliant – funny and catchy, while nailing the universal miseries. A Price is Right-inspired game encouraging the audience to guess ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ on statistics is rousing and simultaneously heart-sinking in the reality it presents. A connected series of sketches about a completely disengaged male GP (“oh good – another research project into male-pattern baldness!”) is played over-the-top and yet is strikingly familiar. Framing it all is a serialised first-person tale – broadcast in instalments – recounting one woman’s traumatic post-partum treatment. It’s a stark reminder of the horrors experienced by so many in a world designed for and controlled by the patriarchy.

Thankfully, this show is also very funny, and all three performers have great comedy chops. A Blind Date-style sketch is hilarious less for its set up than for Marina’s attempts to deliver her lines around ill-fitting false teeth, and a Mr Blobby-inspired skit about dealing with blood clots has us all howling.

I look forward to seeing how the show develops – there’s certainly no paucity of material to draw from. And sometimes, all you can do is laugh.