Comedy review: Alison Spittle Discovers Hawaii
Star rating: ***
Venue: Gilded Balloon at the Counting House (Venue 170)
Hawaii for her is a dream destination, though essentially as an imaginary safe space for her to enter as sanctuary from her mental health problems.
Decking her stage out in inflatable bananas and a palm tree, a prop she literally leans on, it’s reflective of how comedy has come to be one of the few places she can relax and be herself.
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Hide AdNotwithstanding her diagnosis at school, which the Irishwoman gamely exploited to get out of lessons and land a trip to Portugal, her problems escalated when she moved to Dublin and twice found herself facing burglars, as well as the random attentions of a flasher. Told with the distance of someone whose job it is to process life into stand-up, Spittle conveys the strangeness of each incident in amusing detail while retaining the gravity of the situation – her transition into becoming a Howard Hughes-style hermit, too scared to even visit the toilet is recreated with knowing ridiculousness.
Happily, she’s now in a more-or-less functioning relationship and delights in leading her crowd in a game of increasingly tortuous movie star puns.
Until 29 August. 1:45pm.