In Vünderbra, Kate McGill and Sophie Hambleton create a mini-drama in a real-life lingerie shop.  Amidst the bras and knickers, we meet shopgirl Sebrena and ambitious rich girl/would be store manager Clare-Faye. 

We also learn, via Geraldine Brophy’s divine on-screen bra-ologist June Jones, about the history of the over-shoulder-boulder-holder, one of its many nicknames over the decades. 

Site-specific work is generally good fun, as this is, with the storyline just part of the audience experience. They’re also a great chance for young actors to show what they can do in a series of cameos, and Hambleton and McGill do an excellent job of the embarrassed mossie-bite breasted schoolgirl, the rather creepy wannabe lover and the Medieval-era loving boyfriend, among others. 

The story also incorporates the history of the actual building and its renovation, a little clumsily perhaps, but a nice touch nonetheless.

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Already deserving accolades for their phenomenal publicity campaign (winning feature articles in every possible publication) The Wombling Strumpets – Kate McGill and Sophie Hambleton – offer something more than a fitting tribute to a day in the lives of lingerie retailers.

Set site-specifically in a real ladies’ undie shop, it blends the testy relationship between two very different shop girls with black and white documentary footage elucidating the history of the brassiere, plus a small parade of diverse customers and visitors.

Would-be upwardly mobile Clare-Faye (McGill), from Tauranga, turns out to be the daughter of a property developer. Sebrena (Hambleton), lover of all things Medieval with links to Levin, lives upstairs with her ailing Gran and turns out to be working out her Community Service for drug offences.

The story that unfolds turns out to involve what’s fitting for the property as much as any body that passes through. As far as it goes it’s a fascinating glimpse of broadly characterised people and relationships, a tantalising nudge of development issues and a good demonstration of the excellent character-acting skills of the two performers involved.

But the limits of having just two actors, who enter and exit then return with different costume elements (rather than use a more immediate transitional device), means some set-ups come to nothing. Hambleton’s sleazy Jake, for example – Clare-Faye’s dad’s business partner – whose predatory behaviour towards Clare-Faye is effectively cringe-worthy, neither gets his come-uppance nor reveals exactly who he keeps buying lingerie for (himself, perhaps?).

Hambleton’s other characters are Julia, a shy teenager sent to get her first bra who gets short-shrift from a compassion-bypassed Clare-Faye; Fetu, a shop-lifter who provokes an all-too-familiar racist diatribe from the uptight Clare-Faye; Debra, the contractor sent to scope the refit job. And as Sebrena she also gets to sing a naff song, ostensibly to help Clare-Faye with her International Bra Fitters Examinations.

McGill also plays Sebrena’s Medievally geekish and monosyllabic love-interest Frank and a mystery shopper.

The shop-sequences are interspersed – one might say padded out – with black and white documentary footage, conveniently discovered on a video tape (remember those old things?), whereon Geraldine Brophy’s June Jones waxes lyrical on history’s handling of women’s "booswahms". Delicious.

At 45 minutes Vünderbra works well as an entertaining Fringe show that packs in a surprising amount of story content. If it were to go further, more work could be done on its core purpose.

Development – of bodies at a personal level; of buildings at a community level – and the questions of honesty and deceit that surround it, seem to be the thematic keys. With three dramaturges involved already, it may be time to settle on one. And/or perhaps this is another case where a good director could help to bring what’s already there into stronger focus.
 

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