review theatre: The Inconsiderate Aberrations of Billy the Kid | Courtyard Theatre

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The Review - THEATRE by EMMANUELLA FRANCIS
Published: 22 January 2009

Billy’s day off school

THE INCONSIDERATE ABERRATIONS OF BILLY THE KID
Courtyard Theatre

TEN-year-old Billy murders his mother for trying to make him go to school and persuades the nymphomaniac pizza delivery girl to help him by wearing his mother’s skin and pretending to be her.
He is at first delighted that he can “finally be a kid”, stay up late and drink his father’s beer.
Quickly realising that he needs his mother, he forces the delivery girl to stay in her skin and tell him bedtime stories.
Billy’s childish need for his mother is juxtaposed by his attempt to act like an adult and shooting her a few times.
You almost feel sorry for the teenage girl literally trapped in Martha’s skin: forced to be wife, mother and accessory to murder. It’s a moment to reflect on society’s propensity to force kids into growing up too fast and immature girls into taking on the role of a “grown woman”.
The last hour doesn’t feel quite as well thought out. It’s a jumble of forced jokes about the connotations of feminism and lesbianism. The militant lesbian angels who convince Billy’s dead mother to take revenge on the evil men draw out a forced laugh.
The Rolling Stones-singing foetus, who turns out to be Martha’s first aborted child, makes for uncomfortable viewing. Are they suggesting the foetus is aware and alive or are they suggesting that “it doesn’t count” as a real child as Billy’s homophobic father points out?
An interesting play, in a slapstick sort of way, but one that tries too hard to be clever.

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