‘What does it mean to feel strong?’ ask Eugénie Pastor and Shamira Turner, as they gracelessly crawl out from behind a black backdrop at Soho Theatre Upstairs. It’s a question that they, the French-English gig-theatre duo She Goat, have been pondering a lot recently. Life events and the realities of ageing have left them not feeling particularly strong, the pair explain. Really, it feels like their bodies are ‘stuck on a decay trajectory’. But what if there was a world – a fantasy world – where they could transform themselves into Xena: Warrior Princess, and the other heroes they grew up admiring?
That’s the quest She Goat are taking us along with in Iron Fantasy: their hero’s journey to become buff and protect themselves from the past, present and future. Through song and movement – Turner on the autoharp, Pastor on the flute, both on the electronic controller pad – they create a chaotic yet tender meditation on strength that is sweet and funny but unafraid to dabble in the profound.
Initially, it’s the laughs She Goat are here to mine. Dressed in old school PE kits (white polo shirts, high-waisted black shorts), they clamber over each other to share juvenile ideas of what strength means, which we find out are taken from their interviews with children. As adults, strength obviously means something different. But when you picture someone strong, you’re more likely to envisage a Viking than Turner and Pastor – even if, as they joke, they too are ‘European and entering our Middle Ages’.
To change that, they have to get swole, hench, fit. Soundtracking their own fight sequences and workouts with live covers of La Roux’s ‘Bulletproof’, ‘Fighter’ by Xtina, and yes, ‘Eye of the Tiger’, the pair go out to get strong. This means exercise to ‘birth muscles of great girth’ and, in keeping with the internet’s current culinary obsession, eating a lot of protein; while mentioned in Iron Fist’s content warnings, the necking of a raw egg still makes the audience wince. It’s proof of how far Pastor and Turner are willing to push themselves, not only to become strong but also make their art. In a moment of self-referential metatheatricality, She Goat describe how they repeatedly failed to get funding for the show but decided to pursue it anyway. It’s a haunting reminder of how much is at stake for artists in 2026. It takes strength to put on a show at all.
As Pastor and Turner see progress in their bodies, their ideas of strength become more cartoonish. Determined to make their forms impenetrable and impossible to beat down, they raid their kitchens and pinch their housemates’ shoelaces to construct themselves clunky metallic armour that weirdly reminded me of the costumes they put robots in on old Doctor Who episodes (the colander helmets are a particularly nice touch). Later, this hastily pulled together armour is swapped for breastplates and arm bands in soft candy colours and lyrical shapes.
And yet ‘no matter how much velcro we threw at it, we couldn’t hold back time’, the pair muse, as they start to consider why they’re so obsessed with getting strong in the first place. Strength as women’s self-defence has been hinted at throughout Iron Fantasy, subtly woven through in some points and rather clunkily sign posted in others. From the moment a tinny Noughties ringtone sounds out on stage and Pastor refuses to engage with it, or when Turner clutches at her side but then brushes the pain off, it is clear that there are spectral presences in the past and present preventing them from feeling strong.
Initially, these revelations feel like familiar territory for anyone well versed in feminist theatre. The pair list all the things women do to make themselves feel safe (or rather, feel less afraid), like walking with keys between knuckles, crossing the road when they see men, not cutting through parks alone. I, like She Goat, have done all these things, yet the ideas feel fairly well trodden. It’s when they shift the narrative to their own respective specific experiences that this portion of the show finds its focus, and the audience is left breathless at Pastor and Turner’s ability to turn trauma into art.
The lesson learnt from Iron Fantasy – that inner strength matters as much as muscles – might seem like an obvious one, but She Goat have a way with storytelling that prevents the message from feeling cloying. Past a certain age, it does feel like we stop seeing women as strong or, frankly, seeing them at all. But Pastor and Turner have decided to tell their tale, even when they don’t have the funding and doing so makes them feel nervous, and I’m glad they are. Doing that takes strength, absolutely.