A revolver is something that spins around. It is also a weapon. In this captivating piece of storytelling theatre, Emily Woof makes a connection between the two. On the one hand, there is Revolver, the seminal 1966 album by the Beatles; on the other, there is the gun wielded by Valerie Solanas when she attempted to kill Andy Warhol in 1968.
The play is a perfect, if coincidental, companion piece to Philosophy of the World by In Bed With My Brother, playing elsewhere on the Edinburgh fringe. Where that show combines the story of the 60s girl group the Shaggs with the rage of Solanas’s Scum (Society for Cutting Up Men) manifesto, Woof’s play filters the female adulation of the Beatles through the same feminist lens.
In Hamish McColl’s spare, fluid production, the writer and performer plays Jane Fraser, an ex-teacher who has landed a job as a TV researcher. Alighting on her mother’s teenage obsession with John Lennon, she proposes a documentary about the power of female desire. She is delighted when her male producer likes the idea, less so when he wants to call it Fan Girls: Young, Dumb and Fun.
Her acquiescence is one of a number of compromises – accepting her husband’s infidelity, sleeping with her new boss, losing the rights to her own idea – that fuel an anger comparable to that of Solanas after Warhol lost the only copy of her play Up Your Ass.
Woof’s play explodes from a mismatch. On one hand, there is the cultural revolution heralded by the Beatles and primarily benefiting men; on the other, there is the promise of sexual and social liberation offered to young women, but frustrated by conservative values and sexist bias. With her conversational manner and scatty air of insecurity, Woof’s character becomes a conduit for a fury she has yet to put a name to.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August