Fringe reviews: Jo branded insane

By Jenny Green, BBC News Online in Edinburgh

The show made some cry with laughter

Jo Brand's premières her play Mental, about two women in a psychiatric hospital, and Steven Berkoff challenges the audience at the Royal Lyceum.

Jo Brand does not so much act as re-enact her past in Mental, the play she is showing at Edinburgh's Fringe.

She has even co-written the piece with a friend - Helen Griffin - with whom she trained to be a psychiatric nurse.

So at least they are well qualified to discuss mental illness.

And nobody does deadpan sarcasm better than Brand.

Her character, Jean, is really just an extension of the Jo Brand stand-up persona, here using Griffin's character Pat as her stooge.

As Pat takes Jean through her full repertoire of stresses and strains - again - Jean effortlessly puts her down and plays for laughs.

"Live and let live, that's what I say," offers Pat. "Live and let die, that's what I hope," responds Jean.

Unexpected

It is all wickedly cruel stuff - with several celebrities bearing the brunt of Brand's bitching - but it leaves some of the audience crying with laughter.

The twist in the tale comes fairly quickly when it appears the banal chatter of the institutionalised pair is that of nurses rather than patients.

Pat's penchant for Valium has had her mistaken for someone in need of care and Jean's love of a good wind-up leaves her branded a "pathological liar".

To the refrain of Pat's knitting and paranoia about noises off, the two while away a night shift in the hospital staff room.

Using dark humour and their begrudgingly co-dependent relationship, Pat and Jean give a poignant insight into mental health.

Pat is nostalgic about the good old days of nursing: "When we wore uniforms people had more faith in their medication."

And Jean tells of how she reassured a violent patient concerned about his "chemical straitjacket" of drugs by telling him to think of it as a "chemical cardy".

Griffin is totally convincing as the disingenuous Pat, "purveyor of utter mind-numbing trivia", and Brand re-affirms herself as the grande dame of droll in a play that is well worth an hour of anybody's time.

Mental is at the Assembly Rooms until 25 August.

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Berkoff's own comedy terrorism

Berkoff gave a gripping performance

Berkoff's decision to do a different show on each of those nights is typical of an actor known for his challenging choices - from Clockwork Orange to Beverly Hills Cop.

He went one step further on Saturday and treated the packed house at the Royal Lyceum to three completely different acts in just the one evening.

He kicked off with One Man, his take on Edgar Allan Poe.

Within seconds of his appearance on stage - entirely alone save for a spotlight - it was clear the audience was in for an acting masterclass.

Berkoff relished his role as psychopath pleading sanity in the gothic horror The Tell-Tale Heart.

He provided both sound-effects and set in the darkly comic and macabre tale of a man explaining how he killed and cut up someone - because he had an offensive eye.

A bizarre cross between Hannibal Lecter and Albert Steptoe, Berkoff gurned, growled and mimed his way through a gripping performance.

After the interval Berkoff turned his considerable energies towards the acting life.

Self-written - and probably semi-autobiographical - Actor was a whirlwind walk through the murky business of treading the boards.

Berkoff had the audience enthralled by his ponderings on the question: "To be or not to be".

His final piece, Dog - a depiction of an East End football hooligan and his pet Roy - had the audience in stitches.

His cacophony of expletives and slobbering dog stupidity gave a sometimes too real impression of a certain sort of white van man.

Showing for one night only, One Man lit up the Lyceum Theatre - and gave some real lessons in comedy terrorism.