Theatre / Millie Wood-Downie
Review: There Was a Little Girl, The Wardrobe Theatre – ‘Encapsulates what it means to be a tomboy in the 90s/00s’
Millie Wood-Downie’s one-woman show encapsulates what it means to be a tomboy in the 90s/00s and the societal pressures to be femme.
I hate the term ‘tomboy’; as a tree climbing, mud larking and nature loving little girl, it’s always been fired off as a derogatory term through sarcastic smiles and stares.
Wood-Downie skillfully presents society’s view of girls and women’s behaviour via clever 90s and 00s archive footage of ads, news and period drama. All tomboys have battled with dresses, hair brushing and wearing bras, and I empathise first hand with her quest simply to be authentically herself.
is needed now More than ever
This performance touches on themes that every female-identifying individual contends with on the regs around identity and agency over our bodies and our behaviour.
The set – constructed by set designer Daisy Blower – is a messy fringed assemblance of fairy lights strewn with props and bits and bobs that you would find in a chaotic teenager’s bedroom. It’s positively dripping in nostalgia.
Millie moves in and around the set, owning the space and giving monologues as her alter ego, Michael. We’re invited to go on a rebound holiday to Cancún, and join in with the heartbreak karaoke session to Atomic Kitten’s Whole Again.
As we travel through one girl’s journey from girlhood to womanhood, we question gender conformity, and what it means to be femme over the last 30 years. Sadly, it remains a sometimes tricky and problematic question, as demonstrated by Wood-Downie’s delve into the world of female contraception.
As she lies legs akimbo getting her coil fitted, it’s visceral, pinchy and painful. There are tears of laughter as well as squints of pain for those who know the experience of this procedure, often delivered without anaesthetic.
Birth Control Bingo is also a stand out, and highlights the flippancy around both women’s health and how frequently mental health, periods and contraception are clumsily conflated by our health system. All of which is delivered by Wood-Downie dressed as a bingo caller/nurse adorned in sparkly appliqué contraception pill packets and the absolute scene stealer: the purple glittery IUD coil earrings.
From ladette to lady(ish), our heroine graduates to a binge drinking party animal doing shots and smoking rollies with her Captain Jack. Her story is complete with romance, playstation lolz and the inevitable heartbreak. It’s a rollercoaster, and for those new to ladette culture, we are taken on a brief history tour via early 00s media coverage. Spoiler alert: the ladettes don’t come off well.
And while the themes and deeper questions are sad truths, they are delivered in a hilarious way. In 2022, where Love Island lips and vaginoplasty are mainstream and on a few people’s Christmas lists, perhaps we should all take a leaf out of Millie’s book and embrace our inner Michael.
So here’s to putting on the Venga Boys and Britney and remembering that we are all just a working progress. It’s what’s inside that counts.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CjSRxpoocl4/
To learn more about the show and the rest of Millie Wood-Downie’s work, go to www.milliewooddownie.com, or follow @milliewooddownie on Insta.
All photos: Liv Lynch
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