As part of the Camden Calm Down Dear festival, 2006 Funny Women Awards Finalist Rosie Wilby presented her ‘Nineties Woman’ show on Friday night at the Camden People's Theatre. ‘Nineties Woman’ is the perfect feminist trip down nostalgia lane for the festival. Having seen a couple of Rosie’s shows now I know that this is a comic who loves a prop.
And for ‘Nineties Woman’ Rosie has taken props beyond a flip chart, in fact she’s gone multimedia. The show opens with a song about Rosie’s experience at York University by her old Britpop band Wilby. It’s not particularly favourable, though bloody catchy and sets the nineties, uni days theme.
After her death, Rosie’s mother stopped throwing things out. Meaning that a lot of nostalgic clutter from Rosie’s uni days has remained untouched and preserved in her home town of Ormskirk. Including some back issues of York University’s then leading feminist student paper ‘Matrix’, which Rosie worked on with various feminists on campus.
Rediscovering these copies of ‘Matrix’ prompted Rosie to go on a little journey. Tracking down the other former contributors of ‘Matrix’ to find out where these radical feminist students were now and reminiscing on camera about their days shunning those new-fangled computers in the production of the paper.
It turned out – thought they hadn’t known it at the time – that many of the ‘Matrix’ staff had been motivated to join by the same factor. Was that factor feminism? Well, I suppose it was women. Or a Woman. Which is where a story of self-discovery, young feminism and all girl discos turns into a love story. Though due to an unfortunate technical hitch we never got to find out if Rosie got the girl!
We also missed out on some footage of the feminists who had revived ‘Matrix’ in the 2000s thanks to a recalcitrant DVD. However the most disappointing thing about the night was how similar the content of both the original early 1990s ‘Matrix’ was with the new ‘Matrix’. The subjects of body image struggles, rape and domestic abuse are just as relevant today it seems.
The night was still worth it for Rosie’s knack for a heart-warming anecdote, shameless display of youthful perms and her rendition of Tracy Chapman’s ‘Behind the Wall’ using a loudhailer when reliving a Take Back the Night march.
If you’re looking for a show that embraces the true awkwardness of the nineties, including that slightly dodgy period in the early nineties when rather stern yet bouffy hair was still acceptable, then you should see Nineties Woman!
You can find out when Rosie Wilby is performing HERE!
