A lively show that mixes live drumming with theatre, judo, dance and wrestling.
At the centre, is Jenni (Jennifer) Jackson telling us, repeatedly, she was a Junior Judo Champion (which in real life, she was) and a reason she fights with such passion and determination. Jennifer Jackson is also a performer, director and writer and has put together this incredibly heartfelt and ambitious theatre show with Simon Carroll Jones.
The stage is shared with her often comically reticent male ‘assistant’ (Simon Carroll Jones) who is repeatedly thrown on the floor in various manoeuvres. He gets slapped, thrown, punched, pinched and kicked and comes back each time on command. This in itself is very funny as he forms the other half of a silent couple fight and a sibling game of ‘pain’ where they take it in turns to hurt each other.
Also joining Jenni is a huge gang of female students: a diverse crew from the local area, who differ in age, body type and ethnicity and are involved in demonstrations but not in the narrative that’s held almost exclusively by Jackson.
The lighting, direction, fantastic live drumming and high vibe is often raucous and fun. But while it sparks with energy, the message is deadly serious: the onus in society is on women to learn to defend themselves, not on men not attacking, and so the cost to women of not knowing how to escape attackers can be death.
The play exhibits numerous times how much stronger women are than they think, and by certain pressure-points, positioning of the feet and levering, women of any weight and height, can throw an opponent or escape a grab from behind. Looking at the stage from the seats, it doesn’t go unnoticed how unusual to see a crew of women defining themselves by their strength rather than their aesthetic.
Sections of expressionary dance, a romantic fight, a prolonged beating up and deflation of a blow-up male doll and a certain judo move being done over and over again by different women could have been edited (in my opinion), but there are also lovely moments, such as when the women take it in turns to throw themselves at a vertical mat and slip down it in ’40s movie starlet poses for the close-up live camera.
The actual story comes from a memory Jennifer has, growing up near Coventry: her Bolivian mum being harassed when they were shopping. Someone shouting at her mum to “go back where you come from” and nobody around them doing anything about it. The powerlessness of an eleven-year-old to do anything either, the anger and how she then channelled that into an acceptable form of violence. This memory is repeated several times, often slightly differently. But Jennifer’s mum exchanging a look with the Indian cashier that they aren’t on the hill to fight, coupled with a story of a man on a bus shaking a bag of mice so they don’t self-organise, was devastating to hear, let alone live through.
It is evident a lot of skill, love and passion has gone into this show; the live drumming, the judo displays, the party-vibe lighting, the narrative underpinning it and the huge gang of judo enthusiasts who participate all make it a hugely ambitious piece of theatre.
Don’t miss this short run at Battersea: it is an entertaining evening with a hard-hitting message about female endurance and strength.
Reviewer: Zia Trench