Theatre / viki browne
Review: Help!, Wardrobe Theatre
Audience participation – the bane of many comedy aficionados’ existence. Why must it plague us? Either, it seems, for comedians to assert their intellectual superiority over the audience, or else to ensure that the latter hasn’t fallen asleep.
But in Help!, Viki Browne uses audience participation to make the audience instrumental in her recovery from mental illness. When you enter the Wardrobe Theatre, Browne is standing ready to introduce herself to each and every member of the audience (whose names she will remember) before the house lights go down. By doing this in her glittery jumpsuit, rat ears and blonde wig, she makes it clear that you’re entering a space where the normal barriers between performer and audience have been torn down.
is needed now More than ever
The show begins in barrier-breaking style with Browne inviting audience members to ask her any questions they like as she sits within her silver ‘Magnolia Bush of Truth’. This they enthusiastically do – from more serious questions about mental health to the rather more innocent enquiry, “Do you dream in silver?”. She then recounts her mental health journey, from when she first noticed the cracks to the moment she broke down in a magnolia bush on Wimbledon Common.
Our society ‘others’ mental illness: Help! universalises it. Browne effectively recreates how both an anxiety attack and a bout of depression feel, involving the entire audience in the experience. Her coping mechanism of wearing red to seem confident relies on a member of the audience lending her a red coat. Her ultimate recovery is dependent on audience members literally piecing her back together with gaffer tape.
It’s a very moving, effective way of showing how mental illness is something we will all experience at one time or another – and that we will only get better by being ready to ask for, and offer, help.
Help! was at the Wardrobe Theatre from Feb 22-Feb 24. For more from Viki Browne, visit vikibrowne.com/about
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
