A therapist created a warning for Allen, ‘you have an unnamed dread’. He has been running from his endless tragedies growing up in his family’s unusual commune style living so Allen found humour in all that made him, himself. The show runs at 60 minutes with a mix of story telling and improv. Unfortunately, the momentum feels delayed and structured too loosely to feel completely free to let yourself go in the piece.
Allen arrives on stage with a few fun punches to kick us off, a warm up to the dark material we may explore tonight but as we move through his deep family history, we feel lost by who the characters in his life really were. With no suitable introductions and niche impressions, we have a fairly blank impression on who these people are and therefore no reason to relate. With those loose impressions, we are led into some super dark moments of real tragedy which Allen feeds to us as a joke but due to not quite hearing enough light about these people or really, not knowing them enough, it falls flat and awkwardly.
Unhelpfully, we did have some technical issues with lighting cues which felt a little challenging to recover from. I could see the vision here by introducing voice notes from family members and soundscapes from where he grew up but they were incredibly misplaced and came in at such random times, it didn’t make sense as an audience member to why I was hearing them. It felt like perhaps something to tick on the directors list rather than show connection to the piece and allow us to relate.
Perhaps it is a little difficult to relate to as the culture in America is different and maybe that’s why we felt a little lost. However, I always feel like if the structure and writing allows us in, then there is always a way to connect. This piece felt more like a biography than a comedy sketch and I really love laughing at a tragedy, but this one didn’t create enough for me to understand why it was funny.
Allen is a funny person, and I appreciate how his humour has manifested from his very difficult life, but I feel this script has no structure and much more potential than what was realised.
Reviewer: Alice Rose
Reviewed: 19th February 2026
North West End UK Rating:
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