Angry Feminist Performance Poetry ... by Yana Alana

Yana Alana and tha Paranas in Bite Me

I went to my first Fringe show at the Fringe hub on Saturday night. After a turn around delay that brought back memories of my own frantic stints at striking sets in ten minutes, my companion and I crowded into the well-dressed Ballroom at the Lithuanian club for an hour of rhythm, rhyme and the reclamation of the word c***.

Yana Alana greeted us from a high backed chair, sipping on a glass of red, while a gramaphone tinkled out an old time tune. Impeccably dressed in pencil skirt and waisted cardigan, her 50s appearance was soon shattered by her subject matter as she opened the show with Young Liberals, an ode to those young men with their right wing ideals, and her wish to transform them from d***heads to, well, c***heads. Just for one day, at any rate.

To put it mildly, Yana Alana's poetry is scathing. But it's also extremely funny, due to Sarah Ward's (Sista She) wonderful delivery. Her timing and tone are precise and carefully used to drive every sharpened jibe into the heart of chauvinists oppressors everywhere. Her bearing belies the crudity of her poetry, an increasingly amusing juxtaposition, particularly as her haughty bearing is slowly dissolved by her own petty jealousies and insecurities as exposed by the band - the very talented Paranas

The trio back Yana for both songs and poems, heightening the whole experience, and also provide interludes of hoola hooping, juggling, sultana catching and a superb example of ostracism. They are naughty children to Yana's haughty mistress, and every meddlesome mood adds to the increasing chaos of the cabaret.

This show is clever, funny and crude, all the things you want from the Fringe, but it's also challenging and empowering. There's something wonderful, still, about hearing a woman elevate her vagina to a thing of poetry, of wonder, of respect, of joy, of soulful blues... And yet, she doesn't take feminism too seriously, with some wonderful digs at herself and her kind. But Yana is wonderful - sexy, beautiful, strong, crazy, and with an amazing voice, which is shown off more and more as the show goes on, but most of all it's fun.

And if you don't like it, you can not only bite her, you can bite me.

Waiting in the Wings
Jen