Memoirs of a Hermaphrodite
Published Monday 15 March 2010 at 10:45 by Sally Stott
http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/27534/memoirs-of-a-hermaphrodite (http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/27534/memoirs-of-a-hermaphrodite)
There is a certain voyeuristic appeal about going to see a show about a person trapped between two genders, something that writer/ performer Sarah Leaver embraces with a playful sense of self-knowing throughout, from the opening freeze-frames of her disjointed semi-clad body to the positioning of the story as a Victorian 'freak show' - a salacious vaudeville in which everything is to be looked at and everyone is being judged for their prying glances and accompanying speculations.
Inspired by the real-life memoirs of Adelaide Herculine Barbin, a hermaphrodite living in France in the 1800s, Leaver's show charts Adelaide's life and the turmoil that accompanies 'existing twice and then not at all.'