A Fool For Love - Face to Face Festival 2018

Wednesday 15 February 6.30pm

Carlotta de Galleon - A Fool For Love

"hilarious re-imagining of a formulaic sex scene"
"a dynamic piece of theatre"
"A class act, a star turn, Charlotte Gallagher will blow your mind."

A class act, a star turn, Charlotte Gallagher will blow your mind.

Ms. Gallagher’s performance is a dynamic piece of theatre.

Charlotte Gallagher takes the romance book to heart in the guise of Carlotta de Galleon-A Fool for Love, she turns the pages over with deep filled desire, she explains the practise, the almost unquenchable ceremony of expectation that comes with the novel being decried as trashy by some, held up as a pinnacle of great truth by others and with more books being sold by the writers of such works of fiction, an almost inescapable urge to dissect the books down to their component parts.

It is only when this is done, when the engaging Ms. Gallagher reminds the audience that the romance is not the point. It is drawing out of women’s sexuality and identity that makes it feminism of high order; not perhaps the one taught across the board but one which arguably suggests that it is women who know just where the fine line of using sex as weapon and the power it holds and then men, perhaps quite rightly, are just the vessel in which it is sometimes delivered.

With outstanding thought and argument, Charlotte Gallagher relishes and teases the moment of absolute reveal, the cynical heart in some, the flush of excited youth in others, all are represented in the sea of romance and sex, all have their own thought on why sex sells. Ms. Gallagher’s performance is a dynamic piece of theatre, literary criticism and improvisation in which she shows that anybody can be the hero of their own fantasy and sometimes of someone else’s imagination.

A class act, a star turn, Charlotte Gallagher will blow your mind.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

hilarious re-imagining of a formulaic sex scene

Covering the seats when we arrive, as well as decorating the stage, are the subject of the show: romance novels. The performer (Charlotte Gallagher) shares with us her life-long love of these novels and even has a pen name, ‘Carlotta de Galleon’, ready for her big break as a writer. So much is her interest in romantic novels that she even wrote her Masters thesis on the subject. But there’s one problem: she’s also a feminist. Can she reconcile her enjoyment of these books with the sad reality that they are “patriarchal, bourgeois and heteronormative”?

Highlighting the cliched nature of the writing, she wastes no time in engaging the audience in a hilarious re-imagining of a formulaic sex scene, substituting everyday kitchen implements for genitalia. As a performer, de Galleon is instantly likeable with a tongue-in-cheek, charismatic manner.

Charlotte wants to believe that these books might actually be feminist. She suggests that perhaps the heroines are not ‘pure’ virgins oppressed by the patriarchy, but strong women waiting to have sex until they find the ‘one’, and learning about self-worth along the way. And did we know that Mills and Boon is streaks ahead of Hollywood in terms of oral sex equality?

The subject of this show is unusual and makes for a consistently funny hour.

The F-Word