Bryony Kimmings: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model

Beautifully bonkers performance artist Bryony Kimmings has tackled sex ('Sex Idiot'), booze ('7 Day Drunk') and nostalgia ('Mega') in recent shows, which tend to combine storytelling, music, video, dance, art, audience interaction and all sorts. For this latest project, she worked with her nine-year-old niece Taylor to develop a brand new persona: a pop star called Catherine Bennett, played by Kimmings, who delivers the fabulous fun and appeal of a pop act but with an empowering message for girls rather than the clichéd appeals to gender stereotype, sexualisation or commercialisation that mark most contemporary acts aimed at girls. 'Bennett' has been appearing at kids' events over the summer; this show explores Kimmings's own responses to the whole process, locating herself and Taylor in an allegorical woodland setting in which they both try to negotiate a girl's thorny transition into adolescence in today's media culture. The result is brilliant, hilarious, heartbreaking.