Arts Review

Review: One the Bear

 

The excitement around going to see a show from Black Honey Company is palpable - these ladies have been creating a buzz from the Sydney Opera House to Edinburgh Fringe Festival and back over the past year. It’s been said that if Intersectional feminism has a mega-church, their award-winning cabaret Hot Brown Honey would be its Sunday Mass. (Zenobia Frost for the Daily Review). But One the Bear is not here for the 16+ crowds of the Honeys – these Bears are here for the next generation of Queens.

One the Bear herself (Candy B) is someone who has been working with cubs in the arts for awhile now – you may know her and her sister (Kim 'Busty' Beatz) from their previous show MC Platypus and Queen Koala, which appeared in Queensland Music Festival. In that story, MC Platypus has a serious lisp and is bullied at Creek School for wanting to be a rapper. Alongside her friend, they hip-hop their way though topics such as resilience, friendship, and believing in yourself.

In One the Bear, we are introduced to another fiercely feminist friendship that has the same qualities of resilience and humour, but with the nuanced strength and depth that comes from extra years lived, in a more hostile environment.  Straight away, you can see that One the Bear (Candy B) and Ursula the Bear (Nancy Denis) would have been friends with MC Platypus and Queen Koala, if they’d grown up in the same neck of the woods – which they most certainly have not.

Entering the theatre, we find ourselves in the home that One and her friend Ursula have best been able to create for themselves, considering their natural environment has essentially been laid to waste by ‘the hunters’. What does this look like, under Jason Wing’s artistic influence? Like Hosier Lane stayed up all night, and then followed the first dystopian star until morning. The excitement continues to build, and stage manager Hope One revs up the crowd some more until we’re finally introduced to the Bears – step inside!

Whilst eating Columbus Crunch Cereal and Frozen Fish Fingers (because they can no longer catch fresh fish from their poisoned streams), the Bears reveal their lives and friendship to us bit by bit. One shares the legacy of her courageous mother, who was hunted for her bile - much prized amongst hunters. As she tells the tale from atop a throne built on the memory of her mother, we are powerfully reminded that the disclosing nature of storytelling is a gift, and an honour.

The lessons that One the Bear continue to give throughout the show - on discrimination, cultural appropriation, experimentation and celebrity - are done with pop and fun. One and Ursula are vibrant characters that use a very physical theatre, and the costumes by Sarah the Seahorse could almost run off and start their own show. We follow One on her journey as her unique voice and story is discovered - it turns out that many other animals find her tale catchy and marketable, and One is stretched in many different directions, until it becomes difficult to tell her own voice from all of the others that are trying to amplify it –  But it is her voice that we stick with to the end.

Which is what makes this show so important. We do not hear the story of One through a hunter that has broken her family, a journalist who talks to her about her experiences, or from the manager who is trying to direct her future. This is the story owned and spoken by One, with insights from Ursula who is by her side the whole way. And the story has a force that travels through the audience. Emphasized by the Busty Beatz of Kim Bowers and the lights of Verity Hampson, One the Bear delivers cutting insights and inspires roars of power, and Nancy plays all her characters so well, there are times you’re convinced they’ve snuck other actors into the lineup.  My view of the opposite side of the theatre of one of lit up faces and waving hands – for some people, the struggle to stay seated is real.

One the Bear is a long-overdue insight into a much underrepresented part of the urban forest - parents should take themselves and their cubs, kittens, pups, puggles and joeys along for educating, before the show moves on!

 

By Tanya Green 

 

One the Bear

La Boite Theatre 

10-21 October

 

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