Dirty Barbie

DeeDee Stewart presents us with a deliciously unflattering depiction of her youth in this strong one-woman play. Girlhood is often idealised but in Dirty Barbie, Stewart manages to capture the brattishness of young girls with alarming familiarity. A tantrum she throws when asked to clean her messy room is hard to watch but fantastic, and her bossiness when directing a dance routine she devises to Michael Jackson’s 'PYT' with her friends is very funny.

Stewart presents us with stories from her early life that take place from 1978 to 1994. It begins when she is very young, when her mother moves her family to North Carolina on a whim following the death of Stewart’s alcoholic father, and ends with her as a college student studying drama and dealing with her mother’s own alcoholism. As a child, Stewart plays ‘dirty Barbie’ and while it’s uncomfortable to think of young girls simulating sex acts on Barbie and Ken dolls, Stewart doesn’t flinch and in fact celebrates the freedom of being able to do this.

This is where Dirty Barbie weakens. Its Barbie analogy doesn’t feel quite important enough to merit being at the centre of the play. And while all Stewart’s stories are genuinely interesting, the transition between each tale lacks smoothness and can feel a little indistinct.

But Stewart is fantastically frank and it’s generous of her to share these family stories with us, many of which are sad but told with deeply poignant humour by an accomplished and endearing performer.