Losing It

I suppose it’s the same as two negatives almost making a positive,
but not quite: this is not an “acting” performance – it’s a
searingly honest account of what happened. And it’s all part of the
new “out” campaign for mental illness, which now has its day in
the sun, Wax says, after witchcraft, homosexuality and cancer.

Wax and Owen have been performing the show in NHS centres and
expensive rehab hospitals for over a year. Good for them. But it seems
an odd choice for the Menier, even with Thea Sharrock directing so
discreetly you can’t see what she’s done, and the best bits are
those when Wax relaxes in Joan Rivers mode, beating herself up over
her family and social entrapment with middle-class English mummies
comparing their frocks, or English relatives re-enacting World War Two
at Christmastime. She can be cuttingly hilarious.

Her grandmother is so old, she opens the fridge when the doorbell
rings: “Head of lettuce, no message.” Women with nose jobs face
their own nostrils: they sneeze and they get an eyeful. She wants to
break the genetic mould, so she marries a tall man: enough of those
Jews, already, hobbling from country to country with pianos on their
backs.

But there’s not enough of this. Wax wants more desperately to tell
us about her marriage, her struggle with celebrity, her nervous
breakdown at her child’s sports day. For myself, I’m not
interested in these things unless they’re funny. And it is at least
slightly funny when she attacks a copy of Hello! magazine like an
incensed dervish, ripping out the pages with hateful remarks.

This goes on for 75 minutes, with Owen doodling at the
keyboard and singing one or two songs that are the opposite of upbeat.
After an interval, when we grab a drink or slash our wrists, there’s
a Q and A session that turns into a therapy seminar, all very well in
its place, but not in a theatre, thank you.