Spring Day @ Pleasance Courtyard

In relating the tale of her youthful membership of a Christian cult, Spring Day has a compelling story to tell. Born in the American midwest, on the buckle of the rust belt, Day's early life was difficult – born with a violent mother and cerebral palsy – and a local church offered hope. It is vivid material and Day's an enormously likeable narrator, with a huge smile and an easy laugh, but the tale sometimes feels slack in the telling.

The evangelical world she describes is deeply alien to most outside America, and often available only as caricature, so a personal account from someone clearly now attuned to British sensibilities is fascinating. Given evangelical support for Trump may well propel him back to power, insight into the religious mindset is sorely needed. Day has a great joke about the parallels between pastors speaking in tongues and hog auctioneers which sharply illuminates the idiosyncrasies of the region.

She steadfastly underplays the trauma of her experiences, an approach that is admirably restrained, but in so doing, she drains some of the narrative charge. She often comes at things sideways: telling details about her mother and the traumatic nature of her birth come later, as does her church's insistence that her inability to heal her disability equates to a sin. All are instances in which she handles the pain of her jaw-dropping experiences lightly. It's clearly a considered approach but the stories are somewhat blunted because of it. 

Now deeply content in her life, Spring Day reflects on her past with humour and tact, and her report back from those foreign lands could not be more timely.

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Spring Day: Exvangelical, Pleasance Courtyard (Beside), until 25 Aug (not 13), 6.05pm, £10-14