Edinburgh Fringe – Phoebe Robinson: Sorry Harriet Tubman

Phoebe Robinson: Sorry Harriet Tubman
ASSEMBLY GEORGE SQUARE STUDIO THREE
12TH – 25TH AUGUST
6:45PM (1 hour)

by Bernie C Byrnes

Phoebe Robinson is an over-sharer and we love it! From politics to penises to trying not to fart in front of Michelle Obama, she’s happy to tell you all about it.

Robinson, like many black Americans, has a life that is light years away from the ones her ancestors had to endure, and that is in part, because of American heroes like escaped slave and freedom fighter Harriet Tubman. What Robinson has done with freedom has mostly been, by her own admission, ‘trash’. From being a failed wannabe activist to using a food delivery app to pick up the morning after pill because she didn’t feel like getting out bed, she analyses all the ways she has not lived up to the legacy of Harriet Tubman. And she’s very very funny while she does it.

Also known as the author of The New York Times best-seller You Can’t Touch My Hair (& Other Things I Still Have To Explain) and Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay, Robinson has plenty to say about race, gender and pop culture both on and off the stage. Did I mention that she’s very funny?

Where the set lost me slightly was when she Facetimed her boyfriend live on stage so the audience could laugh at him being from Bournemouth. It just felt a bit weak given how brilliantly she deals with every other sort of bullying. She also kept saying ‘British’ when she actually meant ‘English’ but I’ll happily forgive her for that.

An irreverent look at what it is really like to be a woman.