EDINBURGH 2023: Review: HIGH STEAKS, Summerhall

“Would you like to see something amazing?” Eloina Haines is hiding behind a curtain. She toys with the audience, a glimmer in her eyes as she waits for the audience’s reaction to her nudity. She walks in, but she’s not naked. She’s wearing an accordion as a dress, music exuding off her with every movement. As the instrument comes off, Haines becomes a force of nature. A hilarious intro ensues, and she introduces small pieces of meat as her female relatives, comparing to the two steaks hanging off her just below a bush of parsley.

High Steaks sits between performance art and glorious issue-led theatre, providing a safe space for people with vulvas, proving that there isn’t such a thing as “perfect” and “normal”. There is no weirdness ans no discomfort in seeing a body without anything to cover it. It’s natural and wonderful. She playfully normalises the female anatomy, encouraging women to talk about their bodies without any embarrassment.

Interviews with “vulva owners” resound in the space while she cuts the aforementioned meat in thinner strips and gets ready to sizzle them and eat them with the chimichurri she’s made from her figurative pubic hair. She visualises and isolates the shame of being a woman and dispels that sentiment for everyone with her strength of character and brazen confidence. She looks pained as she listens to women and trans men explain their pain in being labia-shamed from a young age, but rises like a goddess, quickly becoming a symbol of empowerment.

It’s a visceral, truthful, moving performance. Haines is genuinely funny, balancing the horror of the stats that surround labiaplasty with sly humour and funky anecdotes. It’s an exceptionally well-researched production, medically and humanly. Directed by Louise Orwin and starring Haines’s mother too, it’s an important show that could be pivotal to many with female genitals. High Steaks was a sold-out hit earlier in the year at VAULT Festival, and it’s not hard to see why. Aptly, it’s now running at the Anatomy Lecture Theatre at Summerhall for a limited time at Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Beg, borrow, steal to nab a ticket. And bring your mum, your nan, your besties, and your allies.

High Steaks runs at Summerhall on 5 and 6 August and then from 9 to 13 August.

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