116 Grams: A Play To Lose Weight theatre review – A war with the human body
Normative body types and weight loss are placed under the microscope in a powerful performance
Letícia Rodrigues wants to look like Britney Spears. This childhood dream becomes her show’s central joke and central wound; an ideal that stands in for everything her body isn’t allowed to be. 116 Grams opens on an upbeat track while mimicking the breezy rhetoric of weight loss gurus: this will be easy, this will be doable. It rarely is. The tone curdles fast. Standing nude and alone on stage, she hurls raw screams of despair at the audience in moments of stark vulnerability: why is her body not considered simply normal?
She performs Prometheus’ torture, convulsing as his liver is torn out each day only to regenerate by nightfall, encapsulating the agonising process of extreme weight loss. Physical performances are followed by projected montages; a woman scrubbing herself raw, trying to wash off a feeling of dirtiness, captures the discomfort of inhabiting a body rejected by society. The show is deliberately relentless, yet sometimes to its detriment. Sketches about conspiracy theories and rappers named MC Bin Laden are thrown in, undermining Rodrigues’ captivating performance. Still, when the show trusts its principal metaphor of a woman at war with her own body, it’s hard to look away.
116 Grams: A Play To Lose Weight, Zoo Southside, until 30 August, 8.20pm.