Gut Girls

Gut Girls: Greasy, Tough World

Theatre Room,

October 13

Even the shittiest job can empower the worker, give her freedom. For the girls at the slaughterhouse, the gut girls of East London, one week's pay equals a year's earnings for the typical household servant. And you don't have to take your work home with you; unless you're swiping extra cuts of pork to put in the stew. So what if you spend your 12-hour workday covered in blood and entrails, carving up pigs and cows and sheep? You are your own master, with a job, some money, and a collection of comrades. Even the male supervisors tend to treat you with deference -- or is that a whiff of fear?

The gut girls are brash, foul-mouthed, beer-swilling cockneys, mostly from desperate economic straits and dangerous pasts, but full of pride as working girls. When Lady Helena, an erudite widow from the upper class, makes it her mission to tame these girls and find them more ladylike employment -- as god-fearing waiting women -- the well-meaning dowager is as welcome as a temperance speaker at the local pub. Sarah Daniels' play is almost rudimentary in its plot: Of course Lady Helena winds up taking charge of the girls, and of course a shift in abattoir technology leaves the girls jobless, with little choice but to forsake their freedom for a life of servitude. The choices are anathema: the street, prison, marriage, or, worst, assimilation. Of the five girls in this story, each grapples with change to little avail.

In the UT Department of Theatre & Dance production, Keri Safran played Polly, the most boisterous of the lot. With boundless energy and excellent comedic skills, Safran was the group's touchstone. Kristin Chiles was Maggie, Polly's foil, and so proud; it was particularly painful to see Chiles slink to Lady Helena to beg for help. Kimberly F. Fountain played Lady Helena with dowdiness and matriarchal fireworks; she was the overtaxed schoolmarm cajoling and berating her mischievous charges. Her enthusiastic selflessness turned quickly to a refined spite when some of the girls stopped attending her club. Gillian McNally stood out as the oppressed spouse of the up-and-coming slaughterhouse manager. Devon G. Whitley made a strong transition from innocent newcomer to gung-ho gut girl. Jakquelyn Taylor-Sullivan lent some fervor as the unionist gut girl. And Mattie Augustine's Kate made a discomfiting shift from proud butcheress to haughty servant.

The unit set by Myra Espinoza and Austin Shirley and the lighting design by Erica Forsch were colorful and impressive -- creating a greasy, tough world -- and Brooke Brod directed this cast well. If one were to find fault with the production, it would be with a number of awkward shortcuts that were taken: Some of the double casting worked against the dramatic tension. (Whitley had to play the maid, Emily, before her gut girl character also took on a maid's role.) And these actresses were pretty. More could have been done with all that gore that surrounds them, both at the slaughterhouse and in the streets outside. Such fresh faces seemed out of place in a world where a woman had to carve her lot from life, literally, if she was to feel like a whole, free human being.