Josephine Lacey: Autism Mama at Pleasance Courtyard – Edinburgh Fringe review

What’s the difference between a dramatic monologue and stand-up comedy? Often, in Edinburgh at least, it’s just the section of the programme you end up featured in.

Josephine Lacey, making her full Fringe debut at the age of 56, is definitely in the comic category. Chortle dubbed her one to watch in their round-ups last year. Yet her hour-long routine Autism Mama is as insightful and moving as any number of more ponderously pitched confessional dramas. The idea that to get people to listen, you first make them laugh, might have been made for her.

Her description of living with her 17-year-old son Callum who has autism and sensory processing disorder is incredibly funny. It centres – as she admits – on a lot of wanking stories, as she explains how she has had to do something that most mothers never have to face. She needs to teach her son about his body in the most intimate ways, so that it neither causes him pain, nor leads to moments such as the one when he tells someone he meets in the supermarket that he likes her breasts.

When his school suggests medication as he begins to get regular erections, Lacey decides to find a different way to cope with his new world. After all, as she says, “If you medicated every pubescent teenager, TikTok would look very different.” So she becomes her son’s sex educator, finding ways to talk to him about his physical feelings.

In careless hands, the material could seem exploitative and cruel. But Lacey’s telling is so full of love and understanding that it feels revelatory. She doesn’t hold back. There’s a brilliant set piece about her reaction to the death of Callum’s unfaithful biological father. “I come from Jamaican Irish heritage, so I didn’t know how to manage my feelings,” she says. “In the end, I had a spliff and a Guinness.”

But there’s also an extraordinary section where she stands with a blown-up balloon between her legs and suddenly feels she has gained an insight into her son’s confusion in a way that is normally closed to her.

Lacey’s tone is collusive, amused, and compassionate. Her timing is perfect. However explicit the subject she is talking about, her language is open, honest, unafraid. It’s the most cleverly pitched script, given a delivery full of humour, affection and pride. It is quite unlike anything you’re likely to see whether it’s classed as theatre or comedy – and absolutely unmissable.