Belly exists on two planes: the fictional story of three women and O’Shaughnessy’s personal experience with an eating disorder, which peeks through in brief asides. The three characters she embodies are Ellie, her aunt Katie, and her grandmother, Susan. O’Shaughnessy’s play is as intimate as it is relevant to a wider audience. She tells her own story, intertwining it with the fictional narrative she “made up,” but the experiences she describes will seem all too familiar to many of us. It is a touching and painfully true show that highlights the importance of women coming together to heal, and it fits perfectly in a small, intimate room with a bare stage as a one-woman show. If anything, this layout made it more powerful. Up close, you could see every expression on her face, which betrayed how close she was to the material.
Belly seems extraordinarily momentous just now, when Hollywood is once again pushing extreme thinness as a body ideal, with increasingly thin female celebrities showing up on our screens and on the red carpet. Those of us who grew up in the early 2000s will remember the damage caused by the heroin-chic wave and what was passed off as “fat.” Belly is about the pain and expectations we put on women’s bodies throughout their lives. We see this from adolescence, where the desire to be thin is shaped by external pressures and surpasses the importance of performing well. In pregnancy, the mother’s choices and BMI become potential explanations for anything that might go wrong with her unborn child. All the way to old age, where even a grieving woman is still aware of her weight in the back of her mind.
Runs until 29 August 2026 (except 16th and 23rd) | Omage: Contributed
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
Touching and Painfully True
