Credit:Â The Yard Theatre
You might be tricked into the thinking that The Way I Wear My Hair really is all about hair. The empty expanse of The Yard’s interior is broken only by a cluster of furniture that is unmistakably a salon, while projections of people talking about their own hair loop in the background.
But Rachael Young’s one-woman show about her quest to find alternative female identities is a complex one that weaves through the expectation, and reality, of being a woman with ease.
The compelling monologue is interspersed with passages from a highly implausible, but acutely realistic, hairdressers’ manual that imparts advice on such things as how to calm a hysterical client; never be sympathetic, or they might think they have cause to continue.
It’s a story of growing up, romance and womanhood told through teenage storytelling, satire and the occasional song, all via the medium of a pink hairbrush-shaped microphone. Intermittent projections of everything from shampoo adverts to Sex and the City, by way of Aladdin, loom over Young’s makeshift salon, both reminding us of and questioning the notions of image we give ourselves by watching TV, reading magazines or even by taking photographs of celebrities to the hairdresser in hopeful expectation.
Co-Artistic director of First Floor Theatre, Young is a breakthrough artist with the Curve Theatre, Leicester. As a performer she is naturally funny and her open, straightforward manner is instantly engaging.
Despite the constant laughs, there are some touching and thought-provoking moments that Young works seamlessly into the piece, so that we don’t realise their gravity until we are uncomfortably confronted with them head-on.
There are more than a few strokes of madness here, that include downing a pint with an egg in it, her own rendition of ‘Beauty School Dropout’ and continuously spraying herself with water from a spritzer throughout the entirety of Solange’s ‘Losing You’. She’s bonkers, but she’s brilliant.
The Way I Wear My Hair//PITCH from Rachael Young on Vimeo
The Way I Wear My Hair is on at The Yard until 29 March.
