What better a setting for a rap on female insecurity about the body, sexual insecurity and fear of being judged than this? There she is – exposed, naked, sat on a high stool under harsh spotlights –  in the demonstration room of an old veterinary school, a bleak white-walled space with onlookers sat on a steeply-rising bank of wooden pews overlooking her. And our specimen of the day is: Italian woman!

The absent ‘other’ which all things relate to is Big Daddy – variously, our anti-heroine’s own suicidal father; the casting director she has to charm in order to get work; and, on a more allegorical level, Italy itself – or more specifically, patriarchal Italy, a country that has only been unified for a little over 150 years (an occasion marked with the creation of this show).

Subtitled The Disgust Decalogue #1, and with a debt acknowledged to the artistic rage of Pasolini, The Shit offers a stream-of-consciousness poetic rant that is part personal story (being apparently loosely based on autobiographical material) but which also doubles as a portrait of, and commentary on, contemporary Italian society, and in particular attitudes towards women. This is, after all, a land governed by a man who makes his money manufacturing media fodder for the masses; a man who spends his spare time cavorting with call-girls young enough to be his granddaughters.

The language of this almost-breathless monologue veers from the mock-naturalistic (worries about her ugly thighs), to fabulist (stories from the deep of octopi that eat their tentacles) to surreal (maybe she could problem-solve by eating her own thighs?).

The words have been wrought together (‘written’ seems too tame a word to describe the process here) by actor Silvia Gallerano and the show’s writer/director Cristian Ceresoli. Despite the fact that English is a Gallerano’s second language, her delivery is faultless. The work divides up into four or five ‘movements’, to steal a musical term which feels appropriate here, and each rant or rap is interspersed with a sip of water and a shifting of position on the stool. In the pauses, the lights cast a triple shadow across the ceiling and for a moment, as she sits hunched and ready to restart her howl of indignation, she seems to be a puppet waiting to be animated by words.

A truly electrifying performance that will leave you reeling and gasping for breath.