(3 / 5)

Sadly, the world seems to be progressing further and further backwards. With most people addicted to being online and seeing an increase in misogyny, the women are becoming more and more at the peril of “Andrew Tate” style opinions.

Two Little Pigs, written and performed in part by Cailtlin McEwan, the story shows the impact of toxic masculinity in an absurdist, Utopian world. When Mark and his long time girlfriend break up over his partial descent into misogyny, he begins to hate all women. In ensuring he is meeting his “protein goals” and, for some companionship, he buys a highly intelligent pig who was raised with farm hands who were hot on feminism, with the goal to feast on her from cells collected and incubated to make “cruelty free” meat. Pig tries to teach him the error of his ways, but lines blur and it becomes all too much.

The concept has an essence of Animal Farm about it. A hyper aware animal who is learning the ways of humans is beginning to infiltrate somewhat and point out what’s wrong with them. But they are still “new” enough to not really understand a lot of things. Cleverly, this allows Mark to rethink and reevaluate things and there’s a mutual learning between the two on life and what has gone wrong.

By using the same performer for both the ex-girlfriend and the pig is an interesting concept. It blurs the lines and triggers these moments of introspective thought for Mark and makes this all uncomfortable. This is a clever approach but at times wasn’t always clear – there’s a difference in physicality to try and determine this strange cross between the pig and the ex but sometimes it took a bit of time to suddenly realise this change.

The production is mainly from Mark’s perspective. The ex disappears quite soon into the show, only being around to ultimately set the scene. And while this is meant to be a learning curve for him as a male, the feminist part of me didn’t want to give him air-time. Maybe this approach and uncomfortable-ness is a clever ploy to teach us something, and maybe the male audience members and , sure, we don’t like him. But I couldn’t get on board with him being the centre of things. I guess it would have had more impact if he maybe learned a lesson by the end but he doesn’t. Again, perhaps this is intentional and we are meant to see that there is likely no redemption in truth but really, I wanted some character arch moment after all we had witnessed.

Two Little Pigs at the root of the concept is really interesting and its attempts to make you feel uncomfortable and question everything is certainly successful. Unfortunately, without a real turn around in the story, it felt slightly flat and wanting.