Oh, Calm Down – Edinburgh Summerhall (Cairns Theatre)

In 2024 it’s customary for plays, books or TV programmes like this to carry a trigger warning for anyone who suffers from any form of anxiety. Happy to report that this doesn’t carry any such warning as it’s precisely the sort of thing one should see. It’s sometimes uncomfortable and one audience member is seen leaving the theatre in tears, but this was simply testament to how vividly the two performers represented the issues, so respect to them and director Ed White.

Beautifully paced, it sped up when it needed to, slowed when required and not a pause was wasted. At points, despite the subject, it managed to be funny and entertaining too.

To start with, both Claire (Charlotte Anne-Tilley) and Lucy (Maddy Banks) are late delivering something, in Claire’s case some coursework for her art degree and in Lucy’s, the small matter of a baby. While screwing up a college course is some way short of the hazards of childbirth, both situations illustrate how delicate an organ the brain – a thing composed almost entirely of nervous tissue – is.

Thankfully these days mental health is better understood but wind the clock back a few years and it was hard to find anyone to register the difference between fixing a broken limb and dealing with the most fragile, unmanageable, important part of a human. Claire’s woes exhibit how a raft of seeming trivialities combine to overwhelm one in panic attacks, while Lucy, trying to cope on her own, develops an obsession that at any minute some tragedy will befall her child, landing her – thankfully, as it turns out – in a psychiatric ward for three weeks. Most can concur with the line ‘Parenthood is anxiety hitting you like a train’.

What appear, from outside, as irrational trifles become, to a fatigued, busy brain, minor behemoths. A coping mantra is cited ‘thoughts are not facts’, but the challenge lays in adhering to this on a daily basis. The word ‘spiral’ appears and once within one it’s nigh impossible to extricate oneself. Initially Claire stands at the edge of one such whirlpool, decrying the notion of ‘self-exploration’ but by the end, at Lucy’s insistence, with the help of some therapy admits; ’I’m, like, learning to manage my emotions… and understand that thoughts aren’t facts…’

This production is full of quotable lines, but the last ones should be from Lucy: ‘… getting better is never easy. It takes courage… you have to face things… And you will find peace.’

Playing until 26th August, https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#q=%22Oh%2C%20Calm%20Down%22

Reviewer: Roger Jacobs

Reviewed: 4th August 2024

North West End UK Rating: