Rachel Kaly: Hospital Hour review – trauma-comedy reaches new extreme

Whenever you think trauma-comedy has reached its apogee, along comes a show to make you reel – and laugh too, ideally – at the depths of another clown’s despair. Step forward one half of the duo behind the hit Too Far podcast Rachel Kaly, whose show itemises the mental distresses that have seen her in therapy since 12 September 2001 (when she was six, and schooled close to the twin towers) and hospitalised more than 300 times. Small wonder the New Yorker voices her fringe debut in a slightly stupefied monotone. If all this had happened to me, I’d be dazed too.

Is the ratio too high in Hospital Hour between the outlandish realities of Kaly’s ill health, on the one hand, and actual jokes on the other? It probably is – but often the bare facts themselves, plus a little personal context, elicit aghast laughter, as the 28-year-old describes the emotionally bruising behaviour (at best) of her Middle Eastern father, having her first period in sync with the execution of Saddam Hussein, or drip-feeding herself burrito smoothies when – just another day for Kaly, this – she lost the ability to swallow.

We may have comedy to thank for keeping Kaly just about sane; she’s been gigging since she was nine. One might wish for greater variation to her numbed delivery. But her line in bleak black-comedy is piercing, as she charts her life’s path via the unromantic loss of her virginity, a sexuality dictated in part by her parents’ mutual acrimony, and visits to therapists (for anxiety, eating disorders, hypochondria) who fall inappropriately in love with her, or fall asleep.

Once that narrative reaches the present day, Kaly admits she doesn’t know quite what to do with it. An interactive closing stunt, where we co-compose an email to her delinquent dad, is a place-holder of a conclusion; and the jokes about her psychological dependence on this show’s success don’t exactly put a spring in the step. But Kaly has a remarkable tale to tell, no question – all the more remarkable for being told with a smile on her face.

• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh , until 25 August

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