Peggy Shaw’s starts her solo performance at London's Soho Theatre of MUST: the inside story with the lights up, standing just inches away from the audience. In her native New York accent she tells us, “I’ve been waiting for you and now you’re here. I am falling over the balcony and into the orchestra.”
So begins Shaw’s, and the audience’s, journey through the history of her 65 year old body. In collaboration with the Clode Ensemble, the self-identified butch lesbian grandmother, uses story-telling, song (the audience had to know its Rolling Stones), stills and film to illustrate exactly what her body has experienced. As she glides from story to story, wearing a dapper black suit and pristine shirt and tie, the Clode Ensemble accompanies her with live jazz music via their grand piano, violin and bass. Shaw could almost be a tall Frank Sinatra when she gets her groove on.
Her pithy tales of giving birth to her daughter on the way to Woodstock in August 1969 –telling the nurse who wants to shave her pubic hair and give her an enema, “I’d rather be in the mud and the rain listening to Jimi Hendrix” – are mixed with stories about her mother receiving electric shock treatment in the 1950s, “she will need eleven shock treatments to get her to wash the dishes” and those of lost love, “the underside of my fingertips is where I store all my memories of you”. Her use of language to describe her feelings and experiences can be sensual as well as harsh and dramatic. She makes even the most tragic of stories seem poetic, leaving the audience torn between laughing in recognition and feeling her sadness. When one man laughs loudly at a part of her monologue, Shaw ad-libs “it’s not funny”, which makes the audience laugh and warm to her even more.
With over 30 years experience as a writer, teacher, producer and performer – she co-founded the renowned lesbian feminist theatre company Split Britches with fellow American performer Lois Weaver in 1980 – Shaw continues to deliver. To see the punchy 50-minute show is to see Shaw at her best, seducing her audience as only she knows how to. MUST was a must.
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