Missfit Mondays is a four-month long mini festival taking place every Monday night at the cosy and inviting Troy Bar in East London. It is all about giving storytellers, improvisers, playwrights, poets and makers of the moving image a platform from which to combine innovative theatre and inventive new writing. And it's all for a good cause too.
The event has been set up as a fundraiser for a new charity called DYS(the)LEXI 2009, which supports and develops original work by dyslexic and dyspraxic writers.Giles Abbott kicked off proceedings with a wonderful rendition of his tale, "Patched and Mended". Giles' rich deep voice and commanding stage presence had the audience's attention immediately. The value of art is questioned as Pygmalion, the artist, travels on his journey to make art of pure beauty. When he carves himself the "perfect" woman out of stone and she comes to life, the woman is angry that his version of ideal is to make her a fool. She wants more than he has given her. "Stone is unchanging but flesh is not".
The next performer, Sooz Belnavis Abbott, is an accomplished painter who introduced herself as an artist who "abstracts the feminine and feminises the abstract". (Try saying that three times fast!) She performed a selection of her poems and they were beautifully written pieces. "Marketplace" with its wares calling out for the buyer to "Take me home and make something of me" conjures up so much more than what one usually hears at such places ("Hey you, come look my things. I give you best price"). My favourite piece was "Three Graces", inspired by three icons of the female world - Kate Moss, Madame Bovary and Marilyn Monroe. Sooz writes lyrically and her words evoke powerful images - with a bit more confidence in her performance skills she could shine on the spoken word scene.
Next was a play written by Nicholas McInerny and directed by Tanith Lindon. "Windfalls" tells the story of the recently widowed Simone who was married to incarcerated criminal Duke. Simone goes to the church where Duke is to be cremated to confront Henry Cobb, the vicar, about his relationship with Duke in the days leading up to his death. The vicar visited Duke regularly in prison and both he and Simone want answers, not only to the question of Duke's suicide but his guilt over the crime he was imprisoned for. Although the play was a little slow at times, the strong performances from all three cast members (particularly Francesca Ellis as Simone) sustained the piece.
For the finale the Missfits pulled out all the stops as Gemskii took to the stage to perform her autobiographical piece "Transformation". Trained as a professional dancer and with a boundless energy that was exhausting to watch, Gemskii came on like a full-blown juggernaut and brought the house down. Her effortless combination of physical theatre, dance, acrobatics, storytelling and occasional song was a joy to behold. And it really shouldn't have been because the subject matter was harrowing and horrific. But because her tragic (and let's not forget true) tales were filled with such hope and performed with such positive energy and humour, the audience laughed at the horrors as Gemskii laughed too. She could laugh because she had survived it all and was here to tell the tale. "Transformations" is a captivating piece of theatre performed by a hugely talented woman and is worth the (incredibly cheap) ticket price alone.
The programme changes every week at Missfit Mondays so you don't know what you are going to get from one week to the next but if this show was anything to go by, they should all be a treat.
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