Woman Found Drowned in Bathtub
11 Nov 2023

by Drew Rowsome - Photos courtesy of Wren productions

Or in this case, three women. Three women who were seduced by George Joseph Smith (using one of his pseudonyms) and as soon as they were married, and a life insurance policy was acquired, they were found drowned in a bathtub. Three women who sputter and gasp back to life (afterlife?) to tell us the stories of their demises. More crucially, to share their stories with each other, putting their fate into context of the lives, and frequent deaths, of women at the turn of the century. The turn to 1900 that is.

The women, ghostly in white and with eerie pupil-less eyes, rise from the bathtubs to discuss, illustrate, commiserate and narrate their stories. We first get a portrait of the oppression of women at that time, beginning with a long list of ways that women's bodies were found, beginning with "found under the floorboards." Then the pertinent facts of their having not having the right to vote, no right to own property, no real autonomy, and the best they can hope for is to be married and become someone's wife. Two of the characters reframe this as romantic, while even the practical one gets caught up in the non-transactional aspects. It is hard to be calculating when one doesn't have any leverage beyond existence. And the value at the cashing in of a life insurance policy. The tubs slosh with water and the women's costumes drip, a constant reminder that a woman's fate, like the ocean, is eternal. Times have changed but it hasn't been a sea change.

Lest The Drowning Girls sound like a lecture or a feminist screed with aquatics, these women may have been naïve products of their time but they are feisty. As realizations dawn and their anger grows, we pull for their revenge. They present their case in a vaudevillian format styled as a true crime re-enactment: a sort of mystery documentary by the dead. Vikki Velenosi is the ringleader, the first to revive and the quickest to anger. She also had the most independence in life and her demise has not dampened that strut. Amanda D'Souza was besotted and the most betrayed. Her journey from wide-eyed innocent to vengeful fury is sweet and satisfying. Adrianna Prosser gets to have the most fun as the bitterest of the brides. She married for survival, a contract, and when she let her guard down in a moment of unexpected but surprisingly welcome intimacy . . . But all three also take on other characters, adjusting their posture, adding accents, pulling props from the depths of the tubs, adding to or subtracting from their saturated costumes. 

The performances are all the more remarkable because the text by Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson and Daniela Vlaskalic is already toying with theatricality. Sometimes the women are aware they are playing characters, sometimes they are possessed, it is a wide range of emotions and dualities that has to be compressed into a tight fast-paced plot that is illustrated from multiple viewpoints. Director Tatum Lee keeps it all on track while allowing the actors some leeway, Prosser dives (pun intended) into her accents with flamboyant glee and all three break into exuberance when inhabiting others than their core character. Or could that just be a woman's fate? That there is only joy in imagining oneself as someone else? Even coming back from the dead it is preferable to be someone you weren't.

It must be noted that the night I saw The Drowning Girls, there was a problem with the lighting grid and the entire show was performed under an unforgiving bath of light. I initially thought it was a stylistic choice, putting the emphasis on the procedural aspects of the women's sleuthing and remembering. However that is not the case and the actors were also curtailed to the space centrestage and handicapped by a lack of effects. Judging by the rich soundscape that helped drive the show and the wafting steam effect that must look bitching under enhancing lighting, I missed out on a more mysterious and complex experience. However I am not complaining, I was riveted by what was presented and am in even more admiration after realizing they were adjusting their blocking on the fly. I wish it was a longer run so that I could get the full effect, I suspect the overlay of mood and horror gives these already multi-faceted women yet another side.