Perhaps the conversation that our era will be most remembered for is the one surrounding gender. Our ideas about what it means to be a boy or a girl, or both or neither, are changing rapidly, and we’re realising more and more how this negatively impacts everyone, especially women. In Sarah Keyworth’s new stand-up show Dark Horse, she grabs this deeply contentious topic by both hands and turns it into a clever and touching story of not fitting into what we call a ‘girl’. You can see it every day in Pleasance Courtyard at 17:30.
Right off the bat Keyworth dispels any concerns that such a show is going to be a sniffy, moralising lecture. She’s not as liberal as you might expect her to be; she has a bit on how she’s made uncomfortable by gender neutral bathrooms and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Her routine on being a lesbian and how lesbians are constantly ready for combat (that’s why they always wear camo) is a solid bit of whimsy too, but the show really picks up when she gets more personal and autobiographical. We learn about her being called a ‘manbeast’ at school, trying to fit in with her idea of a heterosexual woman at university, and her ordeals looking after two children as a nanny and trying to ensure the little girl doesn’t impose the same barriers on herself that she did.
It’s a smart show rooted in sociology. A recurring theme in Dark Horse is the power of language, and how it can be used to imprison others. As well as the aforementioned ‘manbeast’, she discusses the negative force of the seemingly innocuous word ‘tomboy’. This is mirrored in the heart-breaking story later in the show of trying to reassure her eight-year-old girl who is worried about dressing like a ‘slut’. The story of looking after these two children is used to explore the impact of how our culture confines them into certain roles at such a young age, and it is genuinely moving seeing how emphatically she tries to fight this.
Dark Horse is a smart, poignant show with plenty of big laughs. Sarah Keyworth’s story feels genuinely important, and after seeing it, you won’t doubt for a second that lesbians are ready to fight.
