n New Zealand actor Florence Hartigan’s new show Me, My Mother and Suzy Cato can be seen in the Melbourne Fringe Festival from October 16-20 at the Festival Hub in the Music Room at the Trades Hall, Melbourne.
Described as ‘a goofy, nostalgia-filled one woman show about coming of age in the Y2K era,’ Me, My Mother and Suzy Cato, is a nostalgic journey through the era of Britney Spears, cellphones that looked like small bricks and jeans that only look good on a person with the lower torso of a 12 year old boy. A tale of past demons, future hopes, and the ‘universal struggle of the family we need versus the family we get.’
It’s December 1999, and the one thing helping 17-year-old Rachel avoid the fact she’s terrified about her future is the promise of ringing in the year 2000 on a beach with her friends/love interest. So when her mother insists she greet Y2K in an apocalypse bunker her father’s built in their front garden, Rachel seeks counsel from the only rational adult she can think of, beloved children’s entertainer Suzy Cato.
Written and performed by Kiwi elder millennial Florence Hartigan, the inspiration to make Me, My Mother and Suzy Cato came from Florence’s experience of navigating the strange contradictions of being a girl in the late 90s/early 2000s, where the future promised seemed both exciting and potentially lethal. It was the new millennium, but also potentially the end of the world. The message was ‘Go girl!’ but the subtext was much different.
“My school once had an assembly just for the girls to tell us we were all dressing too provocatively and it was distracting the boys and making them unable to learn – but we were never told what was and wasn’t too “provocative.” I think that’s what it felt like in the late 90s – as a young woman, and I imagine as a mother, you were always trying to get things “right” – but what exactly that meant felt like it was always moving.”
As the Y2K era comes back with a vengeance in today’s pop culture, the play invites the audience into a world which is simultaneously nostalgic and current.
Dates: October 16 – 20
Times: 5.45pm (Sunday 4.45pm), 55mins
Venue: Festival Hub: Trades Hall – Music Room, Cnr Lygon & Victoria Sts
Tickets: $15 – $24
Bookings: melbournefringe.com.au or call 9660 9666

• Cheryl Threadgold