La Merda
La Merda
Arches, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
Here's a piece that makes you want to run for the hills, hands clamped over ears, blocking out the sound of Silvia Gallerano's gut- wrenching yowlings and rising hysteria.
But even as this wish is formulating in your head, your thoughts - your nerve-ends, your psyche - have already been flayed and blistered by what Gallerano's strangulated tones have spewed out into the dark-lit space.
Everything is laid bare here: Gallerano is herself naked - marooned on a high plinth, hair in child-like bunches on top of her head, mouth a gash of red lipstick in a white face.
That mouth will twist and girn, spread into a rictus smile, droop into a tormented silence as she voices an unrelenting, exposing text by Christian Ceresoli.
Three unnerving monologues - The Thighs, The Dick and The Fame - revolve around a mix of extreme self-loathing, fantastical aspirations (to be a TV celebrity, despite her lack of height and over-abundance of thigh) and a wistful passivity tied into her nostalgia for the daddy who died when she was 13.
A pattern of abuse soon emerges: sexual, for sure, but also betrayals of trust coupled with the corrosion of innocence - maybe daddy wasn't so squeaky-clean and benign after all.
"You've got to have a lot of courage" is one of her reiterated mantras, as if bad things happen and you just have to get on with it.
The piece ends with her wan singing of the Italian national anthem, ensuring all the elements of Ceresoli's political satire click into place - no point in putting your country on a pedestal if the truth, like Gallerano, is mired in moral dysfunction and dodgy dreams.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article