Review: GIRL SHUT YOUR MOUTH at The Breakout, at The Mill

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Friday 21ST July 2023.

Matilda Butler, co-founder of Deadset Theatre Company with Zoe Muller, has chosen a complex and emotionally powerful play, Girl Shut Your Mouth, that combines some witty observations of young women and their social systems with a much darker environment than is first apparent. She has a fine grasp of the levels of the story and a fine cast to take it to the stage.

The play opens with three young women talking about a holiday, the holiday that Katie, Lizzie Zeuner, is packing for. She’s going somewhere where she’ll be greeted with open arms, kissed and hugged, and offered sophisticated drinks. But where is this place of happy resort, for that matter, where exactly are these young women? Playwright, Gita Bezard, keeps it non-specific and so universalises the experience we witness.

Katie’s price, the price she paid to be considered for the trip, tumbles you into a deeper understanding of the story. She has a bullet lodged near her spine, the result of an armed man breaking into the classroom and singling her out for death. Her survival consolidates her place as leader of the pack. She tells the story, and we see it played out.

Her friends, Grace, Ashlyn Bunt, and Mia, Mia Ellis, offer her advice, and Mia wants to know how she can get on the passenger list for this trip to an exciting new holiday resort. Darcy, Jasmine Setchell, arrives. She’s not really welcome. Her mark of membership is the acid burn on her back. She’s carrying a different vision of Katie’s destination, nowhere near as seductive. The quartet goes out at night, hoping to attract attention and, possibly, their ‘get out of here’ card. Later, Mia goes out alone and is raped. Mia Ellis is particularly moving in this place.

The play could be set anywhere where lives are at daily risk, including, now, the United States of America. The power struggle among the four young women is the pretty innocent counterpoint to the impending violence of their world.

Costumes are contemporary and local, but, when the women put on the jackets, they become the men, violent and threatening. It’s a very simple device and it works so well.

The action is presented in traverse formation, a minimal set of versatile black milk crates, in Jayden Cowell’s effective lighting, and with the sound design of Oscar Sarre. Audience numbers are small and you are instantly engaged as the story unfolds with energy.

It’s very much the calibre of show you’d have seen at Rumpus, female writer, female company, female cast, but, while Rumpus is on my mind, as I walked down towards the venue, I noticed a big banner on a pole. It’s going to be a new block of offices or apartments.