The Wau Wau Sisters’ Last Supper
The Wau Wau Sisters @ Umbrella Revolution
11:59pm, Fri 5 Mar 2010
The Wau Wau Sisters represent everything I hate about the Garden-ification of the Fringe. Their show was a lascklustre collection of lame stunts and cretinous filler, buoyed by the promise of titillation and blatant crassness that still had the near-capacity drunken crowd whooping with delight. Hang on, I was pissed too – so why wasn’t I joining in?
Maybe because of the cynical nature of the show. Let’s have a stretch and strip down to our underwear. Let’s get dressed again and sing a song devoid of subtlety. Let’s perform a few balance tricks, lap up the applause, then get ordinary drunken stumblebums from the audience to perform the same “tricks” (thus diminishing the impact of their earlier efforts). To be fair, the trapeze act at the end of the show – all four minutes’ worth – was really well choreographed. But that was then followed up with the inexplicable Last Supper scene, culminating in the Sisters inexplicably running back onstage naked to have wine poured all over them.
And I honestly sat there, as I did for much of the night, thinking: What the fuck.
The rest of the drunken crowd loved this. But Irene and I just sat there in disbelief. This was so horrible, so abusive of the audience’s intelligence, that – a day after having seen the show – it still felt like The Wau Wau Sisters had taken a shit in my mouth.
You know what? Nearly a year later, I’m still mad about this. I had initially ranted to myself that this was the second worst show of the Fringe – figuring nothing could match the don’t-give-a-shit crapulence of An Awkward Seduction – but I’ve changed my mind in that regard. An Awkward Seduction could be perceived to be a poorly performed piece by people who aspire to greater things, who are learning; The Wau Wau Sisters should already be at the top of their game. The volume of audience disrespect – or is it exploitation? – flouted by the Sisters during this performance, in short, made me furious… scratch that, it still makes me furious.