Before Alice even stepped on stage, the audience sat through hold music and disclaimer announcements that sounded exactly like an endless NHS helpline queue. At one point, a voice warned us to “prepare yourself emotionally”. Fair warning.
Alice arrives wearing comfy pyjamas and ridiculous slippers because, as she explains, that’s the outfit she spends most of her life in. Straight away, the show feels personal. There’s no big dramatic entrance or over-the-top performance persona. What we get is Alice exactly as she is: funny, exhausted, brutally honest and somehow still ready to entertain a room full of strangers.
The show centres around her experience with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis), a chronic illness that causes severe fatigue, pain and a long list of other symptoms that sound genuinely awful. She talks us through how glandular fever eventually developed into this, but the real battle came from trying to get diagnosed in the first place. Doctors’ appointments, endless circles, conflicting diagnoses – it all sounds exhausting before the illness itself even enters the conversation.
Now, this does not exactly sound like the set-up for a comedy show, but somehow, Alice makes it work brilliantly. The performance mixes storytelling, poems, songs, videos and slideshows. One minute we’re laughing at a dark joke about digestive issues, the next we’re sitting in complete silence while Alice shares something painfully vulnerable. Her singing is genuinely impressive too.
What makes the performance land so well is that Alice never pretends to be polished. She forgets lines, loses her train of thought and openly blames the “fuck**g brain fog”. But rather than ruining the atmosphere, those moments make the show feel even more real. There’s even a break halfway through the 60-minute performance because, quite simply, ME does not care that you’re on stage.
The second half turns things up several notches. Alice swaps pyjamas for corsets and hot pants, performs some brilliant musical numbers and even somehow manages to make chronic illness feel weirdly sexy. It’s unfiltered, confident and completely entertaining.
Underneath all the jokes, though, there’s a serious message about awareness and the reality of – non-existent – NHS support for people living with ME. With help from her Instagram community, Alice shares photos showing the highs and lows of living with chronic illness, and those moments hit hard.
Raw, funny and painfully honest, this show is a reality check about how little support people with ME often receive. Somehow, Alice turns something deeply difficult into a show that’s both hilarious and genuinely eye-opening.
By Pauline Sablayrolles
If you want to find out more, she will be back at Komedia on the 18th May (from £6).
brightonfringe.org
