SORRY I HURT YOUR SON (SAID MY EX TO MY MUM)

Soho Theatre

★★★★

“his genuine humour and irreverent style keep the piece feeling fresh”

James Barr’s I’m Sorry I Hurt Your Son (Said My Ex to My Mum) arrives at Soho Theatre with the confidence of a show that has already lived many lives. Following more than 130 performances since its Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2024, it’s slick, assured, and clearly battle-tested.

He doesn’t quite start there, though. The opening feels rushed, as Barr races through his first vignette without fully letting the audience catch up or settle into the rhythm of his delivery. It’s a slightly nervous beginning, but a short-lived one. Within ten minutes, he visibly relaxes; the pacing evens out, the laughs land more confidently, and by the final third he’s even laughing at himself, leaning into the material with a sense of ease that feels both earned and infectious.

The show sits firmly within the now-familiar “comedy about trauma” mode that has gained traction since Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette. Barr even nods toward this lineage, referencing legal advice he received about naming and shaming the source of his trauma so he doesn’t get Baby Reindeer-ed. But while the structure may feel recognisable, his genuine humour and irreverent style keep the piece feeling fresh rather than slipping into mimicry.

At its core, this is a show about an abusive relationship. Barr recounts his four years with “Alex”, beginning with a rom-com-worthy meet-cute that rises to first love before slowly unraveling.

As a self-described hopeless romantic, he speaks candidly about wanting to “prove” his worth as a gay man within heteronormative frameworks, both to his mother, the emotionally unavailable Colleen, and to himself. When Colleen receives a Christmas card from Alex with the phrase ‘I’m sorry I hurt your son’ in it, her first response to comment on his lovely handwriting. The mother-son dynamic is one of the show’s more subtle motifs, but does wonders for hinting at the wider context in which Barr’s romantic life has unfolded.

If that sounds a bit heavy, there’s no need to fear. There are sharp jokes throughout, with a particular emphasis on gags about the royals, but the humour never feels incidental. Instead, it functions as a kind of emotional choreography: moments of vulnerability are carefully followed by punchlines, ensuring the audience is never left too long in discomfort. As Barr himself puts it, the laughs are never far away.

This balancing act is key to the show’s success. Barr seems intent on recreating, within an hour, the emotional whiplash of an abusive relationship; drawing the audience into moments of tension before offering relief. The result is that, despite the heavy subject matter (including the sobering statistic that 1 in 3 LGBTQ+ people experience abusive relationships), the evening never tips into bleakness. There are even detours into absurdity – German piss parties among them – that keep the tone buoyant and the audience consistently laughing throughout.

Those familiar with Barr from Hits Radio or his podcast A Gay and a Non-Gay might expect high-energy, irreverent banter. What they get instead is something more layered. As he wryly notes, he’s “doing trauma now”, much like Beyonce is doing country! But crucially, he’s doing it with warmth, humour, and in his own personal style.