In Search of Miss Landmine

There’s been precious little coverage of this show, given both its subject matter and the fact that it has been given an evening slot in one of the Underbelly’s biggest spaces.

The apparent conspiracy of silence perhaps has something to with the fact that this collaborative production by respected companies is quite inexplicably bad.

Miss Landmine is the banner under which beauty pageants are held in Angola and Cambodia, where millions of the devices are still believed to be buried. Or rather, they were held: at the beginning of August authorities in Cambodia banned the competition, saying that it would damage “the dignity and honour of our disabled”.

The Angola event was the inspiration for this apparently timely piece of multi-media theatre. Augusta Urica, who was crowned Miss Landmine in 2008, lost a leg to a type of mine known as a green parrot, owing to its resemblance to a toy.

For this reason, In Search of Miss Landmine is narrated by an animated bird, one of a number of cartoon characters who get more screen time than any of the three actresses get stage time.

Ms Urica is also represented in cartoon form, or as a doll, while the characters played by the cast in an infuriatingly mannered style include an engineer who once made land mines and a Nobel Peace Prize-winner who campaigned against them.

Every time it seems as though the show might be about to offer a morsel of insight the parrot returns, slowly flapping its wings and providing tedious narration. And just when it seems like the show cannot possibly get any worse, the human cast unite for a scene in which they play a trio of screeching Scandinavian feminists whose debating style involves smacking each other with rolled-up newspapers.

A version of this review first appeared in The Herald.