“In The Barricade, Sydney playwright Barry Lowe humorously traces the development of a feminised collective consciousness among a disparate group of women. The La Mama production directed by Stephen Smithyman is set in, and initially focuses on, the front gardens of two squabbling neighbours. It is a case of ‘The War of the Roses and the Weeds’. Snobby Jopcelyn Poynton-Jones is convinced caterpillars from Marge Pearce’s ugly privet hedge are threatening her competition roses. She informs the local council and … this Council is quick to do something about the weeds. Comic stereotypes are exploited to indicate the larger class conflict implicit in Marge and Jocelyn’s petty squabble.  When she is not dashing off to a Save the Whale Committee meeting, Jocelyn is tiptoeing through her rose garden in trendy gumboots, singing Tchaikowsky to her immaculate ‘babies’. Meanwhile pensioner Marge waddles among her sad weeds in her slippers muttering foul-mouthed expletives about bingo, her Superman comics and her tight-jeabed daughter, Darleen. It is the height of comic irony when Marge, cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, uses her filthy handkerchief to wipe the dust from Jocelyn’s prize roses as if they are the snotty-nosed kids their owner treats them as. What is a Cromwellian battle becomes a Parisian siege when Marge and Jocelyn temper their dispute, and with their Italian neighbour, Maria, and a supportive solicitor from the local women’s centre, assemble a barricade to stop trucks from a multi-national company tearing down their street leaving exhaust fumes and flattened fences and gardens behind. The play’s most moving moments are the intimate conversations which ensue among the junk and Vogue Living garden furniture that constitutes the barricade. Barriers of class and race and trifling quarrels are transcended as the women find solidarity through relaying personal histories of oppressive upbringings and failing marriages. The alienation from men Jocelyn and Maria feel is reinforced by the fact that the men in the play are not seen; but presented as insulting off-stage voices." -  Kim Langley, The Age “There is nothing more satisfying than watching a raw and uninhibited stage production. This is very much the case at La Mama where Barry Lowe’s play The Barricade is getting its first airing. The play, like the players, is raw, energetic, likeable, unrestrained in its naturalism, and highly entertaining ... this all-female play has a gut-wrenching freshness when presented by La Mama which makes it quite unique.”  - Review broadcast over Macquarie Network 1 July, 1985.