The Woman with a Tomahawk

The image of a woman brandishing a small tomahawk, hurling abuse and demanding the police ‘Kill me now!’ is central to this moving compilation piece by Ruth Kateralos. 

She plays the woman in a dramatization of this true life 1994 incident of so-called ‘suicide-by-cop’.  Alana Louise plays the young, confused policeman who, in this vivid vignette, wide-eyed and trembling, fires the fatal shots.  And Nisha Joseph depicts the obese, indifferent and sarcastic onlooker to whom it’s all a joke… We see the shots hit the woman, we feel them, we see her buckle and fall.  Why does the young cop shoot her?  He’s frightened and doesn’t know what else to do. 

Woman With a Tomahawk is about mental illness and its causes in women across a range of ages.  The causes are too often not understood.  The responses are exclusion, rejection or punishment.  Often the causes are abuse, mental or physical – too deep, too complicated, too inconvenient, too threatening – so not investigated, not questioned.  So people don’t care – or like that cop, they don’t know what to do.  So they shoot – metaphorically or in reality.  Police records show many instances of ‘suicide-by-cop’ (a 95-year-old woman is perhaps the latest) and often they occur in public places.  How desperate to escape mental torture must a woman be to demand, ‘Kill me now!’

In her program note, Kateralos says that the piece is ‘the culmination of many years of thought, reflection and process.  Some personal, some fact, some fiction.’  The result is a kind of poetic monologue shared among the three performers, interspersed with ironic popular songs.  One is ‘Give ‘em the old razzle-dazzle’ from the musical Chicago – particularly apt in this context.

The show seems to me, however, an assembly of pieces on this common theme of disturbance, disability and illness, and the reasons, segueing from one to another (not always smoothly), aided by expressive dance, by exchanges between characters and by direct address to the audience. 

Nisha Joseph proves herself a touching presence, communicating clearly – and showing a great sense of comic timing.  She should go far.  Alana Louise has powerful moments of pathos of hurt while Kateralos, as playwright, is more given to statement, to direct expression, to tell rather than show.

Despite the experienced presence of director Sarah Vickery, the potential power of this piece is somewhat marred by choreography, at times awkwardly performed, that distracts from rather than supports the text.  The wardrobe clearly has intention behind it, but the design is surely misconceived – and why the performers all strip off an outer layer of tops and trousers to reveal the Spanx beneath – only to then wash their faces from bowls of water – may be a metaphor too far. 

That said, the writing is powerful and many – especially teenage girls – will recognise common experience.  With clearer expression, and some cuts, the piece could work well in schools as stimulus for discussion.  And it is not all pain and darkness: the very last, simple and very moving lines point the way out of isolation and loneliness.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Cameron Grant