The Frida Kahlo of Penge West – review

Raising eyebrows: Cecily Nash and Laura Kirman star in The Frida Kahlo of Penge West

If you like your revolutionary history brief, and brash and sexual, this is one for you.

This mega-consolidated satirical history of the life of Frida Kahlo, weak in ‘back, legs and womb’ is a filthy bit of GCSE history – in the best way possible.

But despite all this high politics and high sex, this play-within-a-play has altogether more banal groundings.

A terribly meek Zoe (Laura Kirman) has her Penge West sofa colonised by a loud-mouthed, embittered uni mate, out-of-work actress Ruth (Cecily Nash). A motley crew of revolutionaries are filtered through the minds of these two equally, but differently, hapless friends putting on a play to appease Ruth’s ill-conceived feminist streak, and boredom.

The muralist Diego Rivera graces the stage as a pot-bellied Manc. There’s Leon Trotsky, with a bad Russian accent. Kahlo herself is a blonde ‘Mehican.’ Like Kahlo’s works, this two woman show is surreal and overtly sexual in a grotesque kind of way. In not much more than an hour it packs in an impressive amount, drawing innuendo from every little piece of political theory. And on top of being a two-woman show about two women making a two-woman show is, this is a revenge tale in disguise.

Following its run at the Rosemary Branch Theatre on Shepperton Road, the show skips town this week. A fresh set of dates are set to be announced later in the week.