The Female of the Species (Old Fitz) ★★★½

Written by Joanna Murray-Smith. Old Fitz Theatre. Nov 1-23, 2024.

Joanna Murray-Smith’s noughties satire of gender roles, The Female of the Species, is filled with laughs with a literate edge. Poking fun at celebrity intellectuals, feminism, gullible consumers and turn of the century gender politics, it’s a hodge-podge of women supporting and destroying one another, and the men who navigate around them.

Celebrated provocateur Margot Mason (Lucy Miller) has a book deadline to hit but can’t bring herself to string two sentences together. When her home is invaded by a former student, Molly Rivers (Jade Fuda), she is in part annoyed but also flattered. That is until Molly pulls a gun and handcuffs Margot to her desk.

Molly blames Margot’s writings for ruining her life and is here for revenge. Things get more complicated when Margot’s sleep deprived daughter Tess (Lib Campbell) stumbles in. But Tess has no interest in helping her dismissive mother and the three women begin a war of words as they criticise each other’s life choices. When Tess’s husband, the dull Bryan (Doron Chester), a taxi driver with a bone to pick with feminists named Frank (Joe Kalou), and Margot’s genteel gay publisher Theo (Mark Lee) all arrive the situation gets even more bizarre.

The Female of the Species is stuffed full of jokes and ludicrous power dynamics that are, at best, cute reflections of real behaviour, and at worst, silly contrivances. As sharp as the text is, it does require a bit of a leap of faith to buy into the ever escalating farce of it all. Murray-Smith delights in playing with various ideas of feminism, womanhood, masculinity and power, throwing them in opposition and seeing which ones dance and which ones fight. 

The cast are all excellent and having a ball, particularly Lib Campbell’s Tess who goes from dazed and distraught to engaged in the action and finally discovering her lost libido. Campbell threw Tess’s dry asides out with excellent timing and gave Tess an interiority that made the scenes even funnier. 

Director Erica Lovell keeps the action flowing and the mood elevated to a consistently absurd level, but the scenario hits 100 mph early and can’t quite maintain its momentum for the full 100 min running time. As fun as the script is, the ideas and language feel dated as the debate has evolved since 2006. Like an overly familiar meme, moments get little more than a wry knowing smile rather than full chuckle.

But the energy of the cast and the fleet-footed lines keep things entertaining. Not every joke lands, but with this many it hardly matters, and when the observations on feminism, gender and the generational divide cut, they go satisfyingly deep.