Prize-winning author Karen McLeods solo show returns to the RVT. The un-publishable but prolific Poet-in-Residence at 197 bus stop, Penge Barbara Brownskirt semi-welcomes you to her knee-length thought-provoking and at times unsettling poetry comedy show. It charts Barbaras life as an unsuccessful poet in 21st Century Britain. Battling the patriarchy with her womb-word poems, Barbara takes the language of feminism and lesbian clich and creates comedy and pathos. Themes such as failing, loneliness, the Dunning-Kruger effect in art (where persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority), Freudian mother love and a Judi Dench obsession run throughout. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? is thought-provoking and face-achingly funny. Its inspired by bad poets and terrible open mic poetry nights. It is also about failure and the failure to know what this can look like.
Indefatigable, prolific and utterly unpublishable, Barbara is the manifestation of bitterness, anger, lesbian clich. VICE