Rachel Galvo: The Shite Feminist review – swaggering comedy about religion and privilege at an all-girls school
At least initially, it's no great sob story, and not only because Galvo openly admits (and sends up) how pampered and privileged a childhood she had. But the religious education she depicts can still raise eyebrows, even if Galvo's account of it (fetishising Jesus, or observing that the Bible's only templates for femininity are 'a virgin and a prostitute') feels well-worn. It's less the superstition that shocks you than the sexism, as Galvo, like her schoolmates, is prepped to become – in her words – 'the highly educated stay-at-home wife of a rugby player'.
It's the tyranny she experiences too at the hands of girls better educated about menstrual health than young Rachel was – cue one arresting anecdote about a misapplied tampon and an uncomfortable swim in the Atlantic. Another highlight finds our host demonstrating the winsome giggle women perform for men's benefit, so distant from the incontinent cackles reserved for one another.
As Galvo's teenage years unfold, we see this show-pony of a tween simultaneously grow up and shrink, bullied into submission for her weight and her weirdness. It's no surprise then that she might use The Shite Feminist to settle some scores – even if the show overdoes the gender essentialism in its stereotype of needy, inadequate men requiring their women to be weak and demure. If its transition is clunky, finally, from the story of Galvo's God-fearing, all-female education (its relation to feminism implicit at best) to her fretting about feminist principle and practice in the final act, this remains a show with a likable swagger.
At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 24 August
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