Overiacting: A Period Drama

This is a feisty and entertaining comedy/cabaret show on the ‘sensitive’ subject of menstruation, currently on at the Butterfly Club, as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Overiacting: A Period Drama is an engaging and noteworthy show written and performed by songstress Jamie Boiskin, who has created a hilarious and insightful hour of in your face material, that points the finger at the ever-present and on-going twenty-first century international menstruation taboo.

This is what l would call a one-off informational cabaret show! Boiskin, in her own sassy style, reveals her personal menstrual secrets through song and story; gorgeous and confident she wants everyone to know and understand her menstrual condition, known as endometriosis. She endures a stressful thirty-five-day bleed while still baffling the gynecologists as to cause and cure.

Along with her two talented menstrual cohorts, Time of the Month Tampon (Louise Cumming) and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (Alice Albon, and their token male menstrual activist pianist/musical director Thomas Bradford, they together create a pantomime of fun to the tune of popular songs that ring bells for the cause.

Overiacting: A Period Drama is an all-round finely tuned show directed by Fiona Scott Norman.  Boiskin’s performance unabashedly creates an urgency while addressing the ongoing stigma of the female given birth right of the period or colloquially speaking “rags’. A fun and educational show!

Flora Georgiou