FERAL - My Night Uncaged: Finding the Primal in the "Normal"
Do you feel like a normal person most of the time… but not all of the time?
That question hung in the air, and honestly? It hit me right in the bikini-clad booty. Arriving fashionably late to The Factory Theatre, I was appreciatively pointed towards the ‘Cigarette Theatre’ (Ignore the title, just up these stairs!). The description of Feral had triggered something in me - a memory of what I call ‘Survival Mode.’ It’s that place where the thin veneer of social grooming peels away, and you are left with something unkempt, untamed, and gloriously out of control. A bit of a monster. But hey, aren’t all monsters human?
I’ve been there. I’ve been the one laughing too loudly, drinking a bit too heavily, and letting opinions fly with a bit too much profound "honesty." We like to pretend we’re domesticated. However, Feral reminded me that we’re all just human beasts held in the temporary captivity of societal norms.
From my vantage point at the side of the stage, ‘beyond the curtain’, I had a side-row seat to the whirlwind that is Rachael Sue Ragland. There is no one else like her. As there is no one else like any one of us. Watching her command the room, brazenly baring her "bikini booty" with a level of confidence that felt like a masterclass in self-love, I felt a shift in the room. It wasn’t just a performance… it was a permission slip for the rest of us to be a little less composed.
Rachael’s brilliance lies in her relatability. She exhibited these hyper-specific, real-life scenarios that were as hilarious as they were uncomfortably true. The promo promised she’d be "Normal for one night", but the magic happened when she said those things out loud - the thoughts that we usually shove down the moment they hit our tongue. Once it’s out there, there’s no going back. Witnessing that vulnerability was where I felt the strongest connection. After all, isn’t it our oddities that actually make us human? It’s no joke that my name is Odette – It’s a literal Odd-etty.
The production value mirrored the beautiful chaos of oddness. The stage was a graveyard of plush toys and rubber chickens, a visual representation of a chaotic mind that has refused to be vacuum tidied for the sake of others. Rachael’s frantic search for her missing Fireball felt like a scripted metaphor for the way we all hunt out the tiny little comforts in a messy insular worlds.
As the crowd shuffled out of the intimate theatre, I couldn’t just leave. I had to meet the ‘Feral Star’ herself. How could I not. Creeping into her set of plushies, I found her just as untamed and delightful as she was under the lights. When I asked for a photo, she didn’t give me a ‘normal’ pose, oh, no. She obliged with a rubber chicken clamped firmly in her mouth.
They say what’s normal to the spider is chaos to the fly. Tonight, perhaps for once, I was happy to be the fly. Feral was entertaining from the first ‘out there’ comment to the final, intimate plush-ball aftermath. Rachael, you are a force of nature. Next time, the Fireball’s on me!
Reviewed by: Odetter