Make A Scene Presents: Female Trouble at Cultureplex

Make A Scene Presents: Female Trouble at Ducie Street Warehouse, Manchester, 13 December 2019, from £5 - Book now

It’s not a full-on festive film, but John Waters’ magnificently filthy Female Trouble does hinge on a Christmas morning gone awry. When teenage delinquent Dawn Davenport (played by Waters’ iconic muse Divine) doesn’t get the shoes she wants for Christmas — “Nice girls don’t wear cha cha heels” – it sparks a descent into crime and debauchery that only Waters’ could conceive. Having trampled the Christmas presents and tossed the tree at her mother in a fit of rage, Davenport becomes pregnant at the local dump before eventually taking up with the photographer owners of the Lipstick Beauty Salon. There she gets high and sets out on a path to fame as she aims to prove that “crime and beauty are the same.”

Those acquainted with the anointed Pope of Trash will know what to expect. For the uninitiated, there’s no shortage of debauched sex, disfigurement, incest, murder and amputation in this queer classic that leaves no transgression untouched. Make A Scene invite you to come, drink and be merry at Cultureplex. There’ll be free mince pies, and the programme notes even suggest that you can throw the tree at Gary, the Make A Scene mastermind.