Debs Gatenbys Hi Anxiety
Debs Gatenby’s Hi, Anxiety at Contact, Manchester on 25, 26, 27 November 2014
Hi, Anxiety explores one person’s (actually her and her mum’s) experience of mental illness
The show is also part of Liverpool’s Homotopia festival on 20 November
With one in four of us estimated to experience mental illness, Debs Gatenby’s one woman show is a laugh out loud funny and wistful look at how mental illness affected her. And her mum.
As Deb says: “It’s two breakdowns for the price of one, an emotional meal deal.”
So, how do you cope when you’re 40-something and your long-term relationship is over, you’re in love with someone toxic and you’re a regular at the Tuesday Night Messed Up Club for pints of Stella with heartbreak on the side?
The membership rules are really simple: Cry in public, fall in love with inappropriate people and overreact to texts….
And have a complete breakdown….
Debs touchingly charts her journey from a breakdown where “just one day in Sylvia Plath’s head would be light relief” to gradual acceptance and her kind of peace of mind. She charts her battle with the tyranny of the self-help book and helping herself to feeling better with a spell as a runaway dog walker on New York’s Upper West Side.
And when you’re feeling kind of better: what do you do when your mum stays for seven weeks on the sofa bed in your front room with a breakdown all of her own? Debs vividly conjures her mum, complete with her Jacob Crackers’ addiction, extreme couponing and the Daily Mail. Debs charts the life story of her mum’s ‘extreme coping’ and never, ever taking a day off work despite a severe depressive illness. Despairing of the hard-pressed mental health services on offer, Debs builds a crack team of her own friends to aid her mum’s recovery….
From the moment Debs takes to the stage clad only in a Speedo swimsuit, knee high socks, swimming goggles, rucksack and woolly bob hat to ride her bike all the way to ‘sanity’, you know you’re in the company of someone who’s able to bare all in a warm, funny and self-depreciating way.
A series of witty one-liners keep the story fast paced and light of touch yet the painful legacy of mental illness in a mother-daughter relationship is never hidden.
An audience member remarked: “I never knew depression could be so entertaining.”
Hi, Anxiety was part of the London wide Anxiety Festival in June, curated by the Mental Health Foundation and has toured nationally.
Listings information
Liverpool – as part of Homotopia festival
Thursday 20 November 7.30pm
Lantern Theatre, 57 Blundell Street, Liverpool, L1 0AJ
Tickets £8.50
0151 703 0000
www.lanternhouseliverpool.co.uk
www.homotopia.net
Manchester
Tuesday 25 November 7.30pm
Wednesday 26 November 7.30pm
Thursday 27 November 7.30pm
Contact, Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6JA
Tickets £9/5
0161 274 0600
Read MorePublished: 30-Oct-2014: (2668)
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