Fatal Flower ***

A classical piano awaits us. And… a feather coat. The stage alludes to something left field, and we are not disappointed as Valentina Tóth sweeps the stage with a shock of red hair.

She says that she is “very good at playing the piano.” Well, in the words of Muhammad Ali, it’s not bragging if you can back it up. She is, in fact, a former child prodigy. However, Fatal Flower is not a classical concert – far from it. It is a series of vignettes, all on the theme of ‘hysterical women’. We’ll come back to that later.

Tóth introduces different characters performing in different styles: an exuberant song about genitalia, a Spanish soap opera with comedic simultaneous translation, a formidable piano teacher, a teenager aspiring to lose her virginity, a woman on a hen do (bachelorette party), a Medusa-inspired creation, and the denouement, in which Tóth boldly unravels body image.

Female rage is never far from proceedings. Tóth tells of a Dutch television presenter who inserted a candle into an inebriated and unconscious teenager, laughing about it later on national television. Then there’s the Dutch childcare benefits scandal, in which computer errors led to arrests, bankruptcies, and suicides, its parallels with our own Post Office scandal obvious.

The scenes are a fusion of piano, cabaret, song, comedy, physical theatre, and spectacular operatic singing. The highlight is perhaps the bride-to-be performing a song called I Will Kill Her about her friend who slept with her fiancé.

Her talent as a performer is not in question; however, the smorgasbord of ideas in this production is a little too broad and uneven, and some of the comedy just does not quite land. However, the message of gender inequality is piercing.

The label ‘hysterical’ is applied wantonly by men as a control technique. These women? While exaggerated for comic effect, they are normal human beings with fears, neuroses, and aspirations. They don’t need to be pigeonholed, especially by men. Valentina Tóth’s remarkable and visceral hour will not easily be forgotten.