If we had a sixpence for every comedian who used their mental health journey as fodder for their art, well, we’d have a lot of sixpences. In some ways it’s a bit of a sneaky one – almost a way for comics to shield themselves against harsh critique. Which reviewer is going to be hard-hearted enough to pan someone who has just laid their soul bare? Imagine doing so and then hearing it was your words that finally pushed them over the edge? Doesn’t bear thinking about.
But even so, not every one of those comedians would go as all in and with as much flair as Ruby Wax. She starts I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was showing us, in mime and with alarming sound effects, what it’s like to have electric shock treatment.
Well, that’s not strictly true, so wipe those Nicholson in Cuckoo’s Nest images from your brain. To treat her depression, Wax didn’t receive ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), but the less invasive and decidedly kinder sounding TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation). It still sounds pretty unpleasant though.
Here for just two nights in this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the veteran writer, comic actor and bold adventurer is performing a fully fledged one-woman show – an account, with the odd voiceover and sound effect, of a series of journeys she has taken over the last few years. There was one to a silent retreat, where she was aghast at finding out she was not the centre of attention, to a diving with humpback whales tour and, eventually, a facility for treatment when the black dog, which hadn’t visited for over a decade, decided to suddenly reappear and knock her flying.
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Understandably, the resulting show is not a gag-a-minute, guffaw-along-with-Ruby affair, but, because she is who she is, the laughs are still there. Along with the empathy.
As she told one of the therapists, if she’s not being funny, she feels invisible. Don’t worry, Ruby. You will never be invisible.
Ruby Wax: I Am Not As Well As I Thought I Was will be performed at the Comedy Theatre until 30 March 2025 as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF 2025).
