With mental disorders affecting an approximated one-third of the population at some point in their lives, and with bipolarity a now apparently “fashionable” excuse for anti-social behaviour among the glitterati, the time has never been better to illuminate a much-maligned and misunderstood condition. Unfortunately, this isn’t it. Let me make it clear: I do not suffer from bi-polar disorder (although I have experience of it), but nor do I believe do performer Sophie Pelham nor her co-writer Nicola Albion. If that turns out to be a mistake, then I apologise, but why then skate over so many important issues: the horror of discovering that your medication isn’t working after months of hope? The flashes of incredible brilliance coupled with, almost synchronously, a capacity for vicious destruction? The discovery that your friends are slipping away when all you’re doing is being you?

 

Instead, what we have here is a hugely-skilled performer taking us through the patina of a disorder. Admittedly, these were aspects that were familiar to many of the audience, much of which seemed to have had – or had experience of – mental disorders of their own; indeed the woman behind me had to move because she felt claustrophobic with someone sitting in front of her. That empathy is natural: Sophie Pelham is charming and capable. Her depiction of two wealthy bitches in The Priory  waiting room was outstanding, as were her moves from wide-eyed enthusiast to depressive. However, if this was – as the publicity claimed – a look at the disorder from the view of someone that isn’t an A-lister, then her upper-middle class persona failed to convince.

 

Leaving aside the inevitable questions of the one-person show (who are you talking to and why are you talking to us?), this show succeeds or fails on the power of its performer, and perhaps that is only right. Mental illness is, after all, a subjective condition, and if this play goes any way to demystifying its stigma, then it has done society a service. I only hope that other, less whimsical, dramas can now appear in its wake.