Further Adventures in Womaning – Viking Theatre – Review
by Frank L

Further Adventures in Womaning – Written and performed by Anne Gildea
runs at The Viking 8th Jan – 16th Jan nightly  at 8:00pm

Anne Gildea has created a sequel to her show “How to get the meno pause and enjoy it”. She rolls back the years to the late sixties, the seventies and the eighties to when she was growing up. It was the time when television had just become part of every Irish household’s life. RTE reigned supreme. Gildea looks critically at the advertisements, which were a crucial part of its offering. Those adverts concentrated on (allegedly) how to alleviate the drudgery of the daily chores of a woman with some wonder product or how to make her body more glamorous with some hidden garment or product. So we re-enter the world of the Playtex bra, the eighteen-hour girdle, the twin-tub washing machine and much else besides. The ads were often accompanied by jingles, and Gildea is a dab hand at bringing back to the forefront of the brain those ditties and had her audience singing joyously along with her.

It was the world her mother inhabited and her own childhood. She looks back at it with that perspective. It works brilliantly, and she has the audience eating out of her hand. After the interval, she moves into more contemporary times, and the Sunday drive of the sixties in the new car has faded from view. It is the age of the spa hotel, with all its treatments, that has become a new aspiration. This part is considerably shorter than the first part. While Gildea skewers the pretensions of the spa’s numerous treatments with her surgical comic skill, the subject matter does not wrap the audience in the same warmth of nostalgia that the first part undoubtedly does. The pretensions of the spa hotel are, of course, still part of everyday life.  They are not a nostalgic memory.

Gildea, with her slightly oversized glasses and her tops and leggings of striking and unusual shades, connects with her audience from the start. The audience is primarily female, but she makes a point early on to reach out to the males in the audience. She is quick-witted with her repartee, and it is clear that she gets great pleasure in connecting with all of her audience.

In these often cold and grey January days, Gildea brings colour and warmth centre stage. She was one of the founding members of the musical comedy trio, The Nualas. Those comic skills and more are on display as she creates a great deal of laughter and joy. It is a show that lifts the spirits.