Alison Larkin opens her show with a truth: people cope with grief in different ways; some by drinking to excess, some by turning to drugs, others become depressed, a few will throw themselves into anonymous sexual encounters, but a small group of them will write a solo comedy show and present it at the Fringe. Rarely though will that grief result in something so engaging and beautiful as this tale of love, not loss.
An uplifting and affirming experience.
Produced by Soho Theatre, Grief… A Comedy sees actor and author Larkin return to the Fringe for the first time in 24 years to share her romantic history and how, after avoiding love for most of her life, a random encounter with a recently widowed woman forced her to ask herself if a life without true love was worth it. After a series of disastrous match-ups courtesy of online dating, Larkin finds her perfect man while in search of a copy of The Times crossword. What follows is the perfectly performed tale of two people falling in love as Larkin really shows her acting chops and versatile voice skills by portraying every character in the tale. As a writer, Larkin has a way with words and her background as a stand-up comic is apparent in the humour and wordplay while the songs that punctuate some of the more emotive moments are pitched at just the right level between saccharine and realism. There are even a few numbers where she performs duets with herself, and it works beautifully.
For a show entitled Grief… A Comedy, there’s not a lot of grief in the actual story. It’s no spoiler to say that this love story doesn’t have a happily ever after; there’s the shock of losing someone you planned to spend the rest of your life with, the indignity of holding a COVID-era funeral on Zoom, and the slow, small steps towards moving on. But Larkin has created a performance that’s really about the love that made that loss so devastating and leaves us with the message that love never truly goes away. An uplifting and affirming experience.
