Frankie McNair @ Gilded Balloon Teviot
Frankie McNair unpicks shame and silence in this high-energy Fringe debut
"Done with making themselves small", Frankie McNair's Huge Ass Mindset offers a new way of figuring better self-esteem. McNair has more reason than most for struggling with self-doubt, given their experience of childhood sexual abuse. McNair wastes no time getting to that terrible fact, and part of the show's aim is precisely to present it as fact, as an objective reality removed from the miasma of shame, and the silence which only serves the perpetuators.
It's a fact that has shaped her life, leading to complex PTSD and anxiety, the constant worry about how to communicate it, and fear of the responses. As a wholesale confrontation with that reality, the show is a hugely brave undertaking – and one with implications beyond her personal circumstances, given the experience of sexual abuse affects one in four in her home country of Australia.
With great flair, McNair fuses horror and comedy, punchline and scare sting, with a series of jokes that get right to it: "What's your relationship like with your dad?" "Open". There's the same bluntness for life in the aftermath, and the reality of suicidal ideation. She's got a lovely bit about anti-depressants – an embarrassment for some, but for McNair, her little white pill in the morning is so chic, so French.
The story of her father's return to her life is staggering, and the storytelling in this moment falters a little. Some sequences could be better integrated; 'googly eyes woman', for instance, is doubtless partly a demonstration of McNair's essential okay-ness and her capacity for goofiness, but that's amply evident elsewhere.
McNair cites some examples of a Huge Ass Mindset: a kid's give-a-shit cough; someone saying "don't get up" when no-one was planning to; Katie in Love Island (face and body like an angel, voice like a miner), and of course, this show itself: a stellar new entry.
Frankie McNair: Huge Ass Mindset, Gilded Balloon Teviot (Den), until 30 Aug, 7pm, £13-16