Ensconced on pink velvet chairs, beneath a neon light bearing the show’s name, and surrounded by shiny, floating balloons, four women are waiting to take us on a cosmic journey. Tess Letham’s quirky dance theatre piece is set in the dreamlike space of a chat show aimed at women. And look! Here are all the things we women love: astrology, personal growth coaching, a raw food dietician. 

^{Pictures: Ryan Buchanan}

There’s a drag queen energy here, in both the gaudy palette of pastels and sparkles, and the sense that you are in the palm of something half-celebrating and half-skewering its subject. And while some of the skewering seems to take aim at easy targets (diet culture, an obsession with romantic relationships), the way it bears out is fresh and original. Part of the show’s joy is seeing women stare at the tropes of feminine identity that are foisted onto us, and do something completely unexpected with them; not confronting or shouting them down, nor embracing them, but just disrupting them with the force of sheer ridiculousness. 

But though Remedy For Memory straddles the glorious gap between satire and surrealism, it doesn’t always feel coherent. By the end, the troupe have found a feminine purity in their movement that is dynamic and powerful, but it takes a lot of commitment from us, the audience, to go the meandering route to get there.

Reviewed at Dance Base as part of Edinburgh Fringe.