D*mned Rebel B*tches follows sisters Ella and Irene, both in their eighties and still fiercely inhabiting their futures. From the Clydeside Blitz in 1941 to New York in 2012, the women encounter allies, enemies, personal history and fools who think that little old ladies aren’t dangerous. As Hurricane Sandy wrecks Manhattan, Ella hunts down her feckless missing grandchild through fire and flood.
Tired of seeing elderly characters representing metaphors for time and death onstage, D*mned Rebel B*tches is a very personal tribute by writer/director Sandy Thomson to the resourceful, independent and risk-taking Scottish women of the war years’ generation, who lost everything - more than once. The show features music by all of Ella’s favourite females: from Nina Simone to Beyonce.
*D*mned Rebel B*tches is named after a quote attributed to the Duke of Cumberland during the Jacobite uprising, describing women who accompanied their men folk to the battlefield, bringing their children with them to just behind the frontline so that the men would never retreat. As a result, the army was wildly successful. Some folk never learn… Read more …
The problem..is that the show combines a hugely complex flashback narrative structure...with an immense tendency to be distracted from its theme by the vividness of its own material.
If this at times makes for an overly busy dramatic stew, the show's international quartet of performers drive it on with a restless energy that never lets up for its full two and a half hour duration.
A remarkable tale of two elderly sisters let down by an exhausting plot.
Overwhelmingly complex at points but never short of a storyline to grip onto, Poorboy’s Damned Rebel Bitches offers a new take on the women we are all so proud to have descended from, without covering them head to toe in knitwear and insisting they stay seated for the strenuous bits.
There’s much to praise here, but this is a near-two-and-a-half hour-plus show which feels longer, and doesn’t need to be.
Damned Rebel Bitches redresses the imbalance of work that shuns older female voices.
Sandy Thomson--Damned Rebel Bitches
On Tour, from Thursday September 21, 2017, until Saturday October 7, 2017.