The morning before the opening night of Belvoir’s first 25A* show of the year, Feminazi, I spent nearly three hours finishing Brett Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho and thinking about what the story might be like if Patrick Bateman was someone other than a straight white man who worked on Wall Street in the ’90s. Girls, gays and theys – wonder no longer. Zan the queer anti-hero is here.
Zan, as played ferociously by Ziggy Resnick, hates men. They’re the kind of person who tells the audience to “fuck off” in the first few minutes of the show. She blames her father, and by extension all men, for everything bad that happens in her life – including her ill health and her problems with her girlfriend (who isn’t quite “gay enough” in Zan’s books). Zan is a gold-star lesbian. Zan is terminally online. Zan wants to kill every man in the world.
Feminazi is a beautifully, unashamedly youthful queer play that isn’t afraid to get into the grittiness of self-hatred, self-discovery and misdirected androcide
Playwright Laneikka Denne’s Feminazi is a chaotic ride through Zan’s brain that combines live theatre and digital aspects (with pre-recorded video components created by Parker Constantine along with Xanthe Dobbie and Roger Stonehouse) to investigate the tensions between black-and-white radical feminism and the much grey-er (rainbow-er?) spectrum of queerness.
The action takes place on an all-white stage, with a huge iPhone-like screen in the centre of the back wall (designed by Hailley Hunt). A crinkled white sheet borders the stage, dotted with iPhones and iPads and hiding props that Zan later uses to create different worlds. The lighting by Frankie Clarke makes full use of the white backdrop, subtly adding colour and dimension to something that could have easily felt cold and static.
As much as Zan would love to be the only character in Feminazi, she isn’t. This, crucially, is what makes Zan different to Patrick Bateman – she somehow finds it in herself to care about someone. Her girlfriend, Angie (as played by Shayne de Groot) becomes a voice of reason that can’t be “paused”, who helpfully offers some nuance to Zan’s plan to literally kill all men. Which men? Does her list include transgender men? And what about men with traditionally “feminine” names? Even though Zan tries, again and again, to swat Angie away, there’s a hint of warmth that gradually unravels the coldness they present to the world.
Feminazi’s best moments are the darker, more absurd ones that show, rather than tell, how weird it is to constantly examine yourself in new ways (helped along by Danielle Maas’s hilarious direction). A conversation between Zan and their father reveals a similarity between them, and an inability or an unwillingness to communicate with each other that seems inescapable.
Zan peers down into a toy recreation of Angie’s bedroom as Angie stands far away; Zan looks down on themselves and can’t seem to see that Angie is there too, trying to talk to her. Zan changes out of a costume only to reveal a second costume, exactly the same. Zan gives a PowerPoint presentation on all the kinds of men she’s going to kill and why, and hilariously (and arbitrarily) says she’s going to kill men like Quentin Tarantino because they have feet. All of these moments call into question the way that Zan tells the story and the unreliability of her perspective, but they also reveal the constraints of communicating our identity without the right language. How do we talk to each other when we don’t know who we are? How can we know ourselves outside of the inadequate lenses we’ve been given?
Alongside the satirical core storyline of Zan’s ridiculous mission to “kill all men”, this show also explores the genuine feelings of crisis a person can experience when they start to question their gender. For this reviewer, as a fellow non-binary dyke, some of Zan’s realisations hit hard – along with their observations about the inescapable violence that comes with living in a socially declared “female” body. As they start to lose everything around them, Zan starts to realise that they might have to let go of the black-and-white, and move into embracing the grey.
In the end, the play unfortunately falls into the trap of following narrative and theatrical conventions rather than going as far as queering them too. Feminazi’s team is incredibly strong, and their ability to draw you in and then roughly throw you back against your seat in shock is an intimate experience that allows an audience to see a lot of themselves in the play– whether or not they themselves identify as queer, and whether they like those parts of themselves or not. This means that a lot of the argument for endless, nuanced queerness is already made, and a “neat” summary can feel like it’s over-explaining, instead of leaning into the weirdness or lack of answers there are when learning about ourselves. This is the kind of work that benefits from a few loose ends, for tying up later over a gin and tonic in the theatre foyer.
Nevertheless, Feminazi is a beautifully, unashamedly youthful queer play that isn’t afraid to get into the grittiness of self-hatred, self-discovery and misdirected androcide – with Ziggy Resnick’s boundless energy and Laneikka Denne’s wicked, warm sense of humour to boot.
Alongside Maeve Marsden’s Blessed Union, running simultaneously on Belvoir’s main stage, Belvoir has carved its place as a hub for sapphic representation during Sydney WorldPride. Feminazi is one to lose yourself in after your brain has fully recovered from Mardi Gras festivities. Take a queer first date, if you dare.
Feminazi is playing at Belvoir St Theatre until March 11, 2023. Find out more and snap up your tickets here.
The Tuesday February 28 performance of Feminazi will be presented as part of a Queer Teens and Queer Parents Night with support from Wear It Purple and Rainbow Families.
On Wednesday March 8, Feminazi will be presented by Enqueer as part of a lesbian and non-binary folks’ night alongside Belvoir’s production of Blessed Union. (Selling fast!)
*Housed in the intimate Downstairs Theatre, 25A is Belvoir St Theatre’s initiative to support the artists of the future. All shows are made by independent and emerging artists, and all tickets are $25.