Horizon Showcase: Little Wimmin

Little Wimmin is a bold, gleeful and multifaceted 100 minute rip-roar which tackles a range of topics such as the stilted feminism of Little Women, the climate crisis and…the best lime juicer on the market. 

The show starts with the five members of the troupe hovering like Liberace saints with crazed smizes as they fill us in on the madness to come. We are told to use this information as ‘cosmic cement’ for the ensuing plot holes and to think about our contemporary astrological and environmental worries as if we are in some deranged English class. 

The play proper then starts and you realise that the Figs in Wigs (who are perhaps best known for their synchronised dancing) can actually really act. Their Little Wimmin feels like a 50s afternoon special with specific and successful characterisation of each of the March sisters.

But this palatable and uncanny valley-esque depiction only lasts so long as we descend into some surreal fever dream. Hoop skirts, an 80s Christmas classic, drink backwash, a vibrating gym machine, a human-sized nose – the second half is as chaotic as the objects that pepper the stage yet Figs in Wigs continue to hold narrative semblance and, somehow, keep Little Women in our minds. 

If you want the comedically experimental edge of the Fringe mixed with perhaps one of the most lavish (but still very DIY) productions of the festival, get yourself down to ZOO Southside to toast (at the stroke of midnight over a giant margarita) this dazzling show.