Reviews - Fringe 2019

Love, Loss and What I Wore

By Marianne Daly
Published July 25, 2018

Love, Loss and What I Wore
Love, Loss and What I Wore

Five women confidently stride onto the stage with their suitcases. Each one takes her spot and thus begins a colourful kaleidoscope of characters and stories about women and about clothes. From that first moment, I was very impressed at how precisely and gracefully the women move about the stage.

I lost count of how many different pieces of clothing they make reference to and I loved the use of white items to represent clothes remembered. Women more fashion savvy than I would appreciate more fully the fond descriptions of the characters' most treasured brands. The only one I recognized was Birkenstocks.

All the shifts in topics, characters and extensive use of costume props were perfectly choreographed and executed. Well-chosen music punctuated many of the scenes and set the tone.

At times my feminist sensibilities felt some topics were trite; while a couple other topics were mentioned too casually. I found it hard to jump from a woman talking about losing her 18 month old son to her talking about clothes, or being raped then talking about boots.

I understand that what she says about short skirts haa a deeper meaning, but I found it hard to jump from death to sexual assault back to clothes so quickly.

If I had read the multi-page professional program before the show, then I would not have been confused about why each actress called herself Gingy for some of the stories.

Most of the time, the characters of the women telling the stories came across as clearly as the stories they told, but there were a couple of segments where I found the New York and Southern Belle accents to be inconsistent enough that I found it distracting.

The audience thoroughly enjoyed this show. It was a delightful feeling to join in the spontaneous laughter of light-hearted, communal self-deprecating humour. Favourite scenes like the purse and wearing black drew collective nods, giggles and sighs. Kudos to the Women's Company of Regina for this wonderful show.

A portion of profits from this show will be donated to support Hamilton Interval House. Thank you for that!

Marianne Daly is a writer, storyteller and retired high school teacher.

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