Written by Ellen Ritchie

Directed by Becky Hope-Palmer

Tickets from £12.00

Not only located in the Play, Pie, and a Pint spring collection, the suppressed anger of women has had a steady and strong presence through the past month’s shows – showing no signs of halting with Ellen Ritchie’s Hotdog, co-presented by the Traverse Theatre and Macrobert Art Centre. Intense, utilising the Traverse One space rather than the usual, more intimate Traverse Two. Ritchie’s show rings loud, if occasionally unsteady, in a production with a powerful leading performance and Ritchie’s profound handling of narratives around sexual violence and healing.

So, who is Hotdog? It’s initially the only name we have for this young student who has fallen out with her flatmates and best pal, hasn’t spoken to her mum in weeks, has nae cash, and is finding leftovers in her belly button. It’s not exactly going well for this young student, full of rage, and their only outlet is to project to the air, to us, the audience. They’re determined to move past these grievances to be the life of the party, to drink until it’s numb, and what better way to do this than by cutting about a rave dressed as a Hotdog, complete with condiments – classy. 

But there’s something else at this party waiting for this young woman wrapped in a bun. A piece of herself, a piece she wants to reclaim.

Exploring the aftermath of a traumatic sexual assault, Ritchie’s script makes it clear that precise details aren’t necessary to the weight, adding to this elegance of the script that only suffers a few bumps on pushed humour to balance it all out. Hotdog’s life is just beginning, but that outer bun has had to harden in recent weeks, and their self-sabotaging behaviour is captured in Chloe-Ann Tylor’s exceptional performance with chaotic energy and intensity.

In the compliment of the month: no one other than Tylor could stand on the Trav 1 stage, dressed as a hotdog, and deliver such a belter of a performance. And it’s a performance, under Becky Hope-Palmer’s ambitious direction that enables Tylor the freedom to tap into the stories’ quality and finer moments, though has much to contend with given the movement, scale, and additional (colourful and fun) lighting. Tylor uses all of this extended space, with Kenny Miller’s design going a step beyond most of the PPP expectations – offering a linear flow for the narrative. It can come over as a touch too busy on occasion, more in the movement structure and line use, but it does enable some comedic scene-building from Tylor to conjure up a busy rave at someone’s gaff.

Eventually, after much set-up and humour, not always hitting the mark, Hotdog ‘finds’ that piece of themselves in the grooves of the bathroom floor, described in agonising, poignant detail in Ritchie’s script – entirely conveyed with gravitas and harrowing sensitivity by Tylor. It’s here where the bumps of the script flatten out and head towards the finish line, aided by Ross Allan, who trades in his role as a stagehand and occasional DJ, donning a pinny and stepping directly into the narrative, breaking off Taylor’s monologue for a wrap-up two-hander scene where Allan’s kebab house therapist teases out the final sobering moments of realisation and acceptance. It comes to a grateful ending of encouraging hope, but not without making it clear the irreversible damage exists – and is acknowledged.

The armour worn by those who have experienced traumatic events can vary. Hotdog’s silent rage and costume are just two in the hundreds of thousands of ways women channel these experiences and coat themselves. And with enough colourful language to make a sailor blush, Hotdog is a fifty-minute serving of captivating, intimate performance and rage-fuelled flavour – just hold the mustard, please.  

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