A gritty one-person production in defence of madness
“Ladies and Gentlethem — feeling a little upset?” The production company fish in a dress have just the cure: coming to see The City for Incurable Women at the Edinburgh Fringe! A historical deep-dive into ‘hysterical women’ and their diagnoses, cures, and stories, this show entertains as much as it educates. The play is set in 1880s Paris, and follows the story of women in a psychiatric hospital, and the doctors that try to see method in their madness.
Opening with an eerie frozen image of a solitary woman onstage in a straitjacket-esque costume, the play quickly progresses past giggles from the crowd to a spellbound audience as the story unfolds. Actor Charlotte McBurney gives a formidable performance as patient, doctor, and narrator while the narrative unravels, blurring the line between the medical theatre and the drama theatre. The acting is superb — the sincerity of every line and the poignant silence between each creates a story that will make you want to laugh and cry. One of its only downsides is the spoken word section at the end: while the message of the story falling apart was clear I felt it detracted from the overall characterisation and plot. Nevertheless, A City for Incurable Women is an incredibly strong piece of new writing that will have you thinking about the gender imbalance of the medical world, both historically and, perhaps more disturbingly, still present today. (A City for Incurable Women is on at the Edinburgh Fringe between 1:35pm and 2:35pm every day from the 1st August to 24th August. Get tickets here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/the-city-for-incurable-women.)