Jake Mace
Bonkers, batshit brilliance is the offering in All the Fraudulent Horse Girls. 11-year old Audrey finds herself telepathically linked with all other genuine horse girls across the world after a tooth-chipping incident, sending her down a kaleidoscopic rabbit-hole of unrelenting obsession. An ensemble cast perform Audrey, sending the audience flying through a gag-a-minute highspeed journey that touches the corners of the Wild West, colonialism, fandom, and what it takes to prove yourself to those nasty high school bullies. All of this is done with an effortless light touch, keeping the onus on side-splitting humour.
Through Audrey, we explore the bedroom every horse girl dreams of – posters from the animated film Spirit and best-friends TV series The Saddle Club. The equine-related media that Audrey consumes seems to also consume her entirely, as she sinks further into a world of fiction it reveals another layer of wacky delusion in her mind, contrasted by the fact that she is clearly trying to escape a difficult experience being bullied at school. The storyline takes a nosedive into silliness as Cormac McCarthy’s vaguely horse-themed novels take over Audrey’s life, and we’re invited into this endlessly inventive story-world by the enthusiastic ensemble.
The first incarnation of Audrey we’re introduced to is played by drag artist and performer Cazeleōn, whose characterisation shrieks with saccharine sweet jubilance as she dives around the pungently pink bedroom set. Somewhere buried off-stage, the band start filling in for Audrey’s high school ‘friends’, bullies, family, accompanied by the voiceover of a French girl from Toulouse named Mathilde with whom Audrey is telepathically-linked.
All this carries a hefty laugh but also eases us into the more mental audience interaction that’s to come. Cazeleōn perhaps delivers the most deftly-realised performance of Audrey out of the ensemble, and certainly the most-grounded, as she offers us the first window into the rest of this mad fantasia. It’s a truly stunning, silly, hysterical performance.
Worlds shift as we transcend into a highly self-aware and dazzlingly sensuous fantastic realm exploring Cormac McCarthy’s book All the Pretty Horses, finding Audrey transported from a one-on-one interaction with a police horse in the Sydney CBD into the Mexican desert. Beth Graham offers up an unhinged, out-of-this-world cowboy version of Audrey, who also seems to have taken on the moniker of John Grady Cole from McCarthy’s novel. A highly physical, side-splitting performance traverses the psychedelic desert with erratic, fun, wild pop culture references baked in the whole way. We assess the problematic implications of the Wild West setting, the nuances left none-to-bare but with such a hearty ethos that we’re all strapped in for this wild ride.
Alice Morgan-Richards leads us towards an abstract, meta-theatrical form in the play’s closing acts, as we repeat horse girl portents together as a crowd and will the spirit of the genuine horse girl into being in all its toxic, nightmarish glee. The show never demeans those who obsess over things in their pre-teens, but instead offers a psychedelic, maybe… cathartic? window into those minds and the adults that might eventually form out of them.
It explores ideas about neurodiversity and how it impacts youth in an abstract sense, a somehow quite affirming sense, asking us to remember what we became obsessed with, how it made us who we are – and exploring it here at its furthest, most extreme corners. Charles Quittner’s direction offers a balance here that serves up something fresh, unapologetic, and daring.
You’d be fair in thinking that all the frivolity involved might lack profundity, and at times it does, but none of it matters, this is a bold, fun, brazen comedy piece with all the theatrical chops to back it up, which takes you on a boundless journey all the while.
All the Fradulent Horse Girls makes obscenely well-crafted use of the talents of its cast and crew. From drag performers, to Gaulier-trained clowns, excellent production design from Oli Fuller that dallies and fancifully entertains, and an overwhelming sense of fun and childish excitement embedded at the show’s core.
Unrelenting, fierce, and downright ostentatious in the best possible way – this laugh-a-minute show will leave you wondering what the perfect equine fantasy looks like, offering a sideways glance into Audrey’s wild pre-teen years.
Recommended Drink: A sugar cube, dissolved in White Horse whisky, smothered in glitter and pink lemonade.
Performances of All the Fraudulent Horse Girls have now concluded at EdFringe 2024.
Phoebe Bakker
