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Sophie Pelham relives her battle with the demons of manic depression/bi-polar disorder |
Manic highs and crushing lows
REVIEW: CALL ME IF YOU FEEL TOO HAPPY
Old Red Lion
WHEN you think of mental illness, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? It might be Jack Nicholson, grizzled and shock-headed in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Or Van Gogh, perhaps, light of one ear.
Most probably it will be something extreme or romantic, yet many people in everyday life – statisticians claim one in three – are beset by similar, if not quite so hyperbolic, demons.
Sophie Pelham is one of these people.
Diagnosed as bipolar after getting caught in the Asian tsunami in 2004, Pelham has run the gauntlet of shrinks, pills, Priory visits, sleepless nights, manic highs and self-despair. And now she’s reliving the whole process on stage, night after night, in front of a live audience.
Collaborating with former BBC journalist Nicola Albon, the actress has
distilled her four years of highs and lows into a succinct 45-minute one-woman show that starts, appropriately, with Pelham frantically emptying the contents of an entire life onto the pristine white stage in the search for her passport.
It’s a well-trodden topic, of course, that the arts have a nasty habit of bowdlerising to suit their own dramatic ends.
But Call Me If You Feel Too Happy succeeds due to its sincerity and the frank, unpretentious performance of its lead.
Unlike the famous faces of manic depression – Peter Sellers, Winston Churchill, et al – Pelham is a Rugby-player’s blonde with a fondness for Heat celebrities and shopping, who thinks the Priory is a “celebrity hotel”.
“It’s so unfair – I’m mental and I’m not a genius,” she complains.
But her frustration is our gain: we need more “ordinary” depictions of mental illness, less tortured piano geniuses and maths prodigies, if society is to better understand this huge, and still growing issue.
Besides, as Pelham observes, what’s normal anyway?
Until November 1
020 7837 7816 |
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