Glittery Clittery: A ConSENSUAL Party, presented by the Fringe Wives Club comedy group is exactly what it says on the label, and in the best way possible. Recipient of the 2017 Moosehead Award, the show is belly-laugh good from the moment the trio step into the audience, black velvet capes over sparkling costumes. These Fringe Wives – Tessa Waters, Rowena Hutson and Victoria Falconer-Pritchard – are all the proverbial Beyoncé. With unique and differing brands of humour, they deliver a high-energy, all-singing, all-dancing cabaret spectacular featuring glitter, sequins, feminism, sex and vaginas, or as the ladies call them, glitter holes.
Glittery Clittery is interactive: several times during the show it breaks into a dance party, during which the Fringe Wives encourage the audience to dance along – the best dancer being awarded a high-five from Hutson, a glass of Falconer-Pritchard’s champagne or a make out session with Waters. There are frank discussions of sex, early crushes and lady boners. Occasionally the show trends towards heteronormativity, for the sake of clarity, such as when Hutson is dressed as a plushie of born-female genitalia during an audience inclusive quiz. This fortunately detracts little from the overall feeling of love and inclusivity
After the first song and dance of the show, the ladies straight up advise the audience “this is definitely not Wil Anderson.” The show might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and they acknowledge that, offering audience members who may be uncomfortable an early opportunity to leave. With a name like Glittery Clittery, or its featuring of the renowned Waters, there shouldn’t be any confusion regarding the tone of the show. The content of the show itself isn’t revolutionary feminism, at least not for someone with an understanding of the current politics surrounding the subject, but instead presents feminist issues and discussions in an open way that speaks to a much wider audience without losing its comedic edge.
One song early in the show particularly stands out – ‘He Only Did It Because He Likes You,’ a Bieber-esque love song. The song has the three Beyonce’s singing of personal incidents dismissed due to their ‘complimentary’ nature, from being bitten in the schoolyard by a vampiric young boy, ogled as a teenager by older men, then being sexually assaulted on public transport. These sorts of stories are horrifically rife from young women, yet when Falconer-Pritchard sings of her experience on the London Underground, it moves these experiences from an awful story to something heart-wrenching.
On paper, this show may seem serious, but much of the humour comes not in spite of the issues discussed but because of them. Perhaps it’s a little bit confronting when someone asks you to touch the labia attached to the shoulders of their costume, but with Glittery Clittery, that feels like the whole point.
