‘This is a show about why we’re not happy and you’re not happy either.’
But wait! This is not an hour of doom and gloom; instead it’s the very funny Jonny Donahoe and Paddy Gervers, doing what they do best; making us laugh about serious stuff, but making sure we get the message too. With a mixture of music, banter and physical theatre, these two friends take us on a whirlwind tour of the achievements of the last five Tory prime ministers.
There aren’t (m)any.
When there are only two actors in a show, we need to know who is who quickly; Jonny and Paddy are wearing sharply contrasting onesies. Job done. The core of their story is mental health; the struggles they have had with it (Jonny has ADHD, Paddy severe clinical depression), the lack of professional support they’ve been offered, and the reasons why the hard-pressed NHS is going to hell in a handbasket.
They continually puncture the seriousness with hilarious, fast-paced and very witty songs,
‘Just levelling it back up’
The first one, ‘Happiness is Out There’, upturns all the platitudes routinely dished out to the miserable,
‘It’s never too late to give up!’
‘If you shoot for the stars, they’ll shoot back!’
Another song takes the tropes of video games and uses them to recreate the endless frustration of trying to access mental health services. Paddy is blocked at every turn by some kind of monster aka bureaucracy; we laugh at the joke (because it is very funny) but we feel the pain, the increasingly frantic desperation, too. And this is the genius of these two excellent performers; they make us laugh, then the penny drops; this is the way vulnerable people are treated in 21st century Britain.
Along the way Jonny and Paddy also have a crack at the parlous state of arts funding. As you’d expect, they’re very entertaining on this topic too. And as you’d also expect, they hit their targets with precision.
As the litany of ex PMs continues, we learn that Paddy became more and more depressed. All he got from his cash-strapped GP was pills (starting with Prozac and moving swiftly on), because they’re the cheapest, least labour intensive, things to prescribe; the NHS simply does not have the resources for anything else.
And the more the NHS, however unwillingly, fails people, says Jonny, the more they will turn to other things. Cue a well-earned diatribe against the self-help/’wellness’ industry, a hilarious send up of a certain actress’s merchandise, and their own suggestions for a new range that might work even better (it won’t, but it will make you laugh.)
As terrible Tory PMs pile up, poor Paddy is getting sicker and sicker. Jonny decides to take action to help his friend, and in a priceless piece of visual theatre demonstrates just how he does this.
And then, in another lightning change of mood, we are hit by the most moving scene in the whole show.
This was the first preview of the show’s Fringe run, and the audience loved it. You’ll leave the Piccolo not sure whether to laugh or cry, but you’ll know you had a very good time.
(The title of the show, incidentally, refers to David Cameron’s ill-fated Happiness Project, which sought to discover how happy everybody was. It was quietly ditched; can’t imagine why….)
‘Our superpower’ says Jonny, ‘is that we can’t do jobs so we ended up doing this.’
You’ll be so glad they did.
Jonny & the Baptists: The Happiness Index is on at Venue 3, Assembly George Square Gardens (Piccolo) until 24th August. Please note that there is no show on 12th, 13th, 19th or 20th August. Tickets here.
