THAT’S NOT MY NAME at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★

“occasionally funny, often angry, frequently absurd, and sometimes quite sad”

Honestly, this one is really hard to review. Writer-performer Sammy Trotman, in her one-woman ‘not a show’ (Press copy) about the mental health system, even talks about having a reviewer in during the show in a way which reads ‘good luck reviewing this one!’. She tells us it’s not a show. And even if it is a show, who is it for? Her director, Jake Rix, who makes several on-stage appearances and tries to make sure the show gets back on track, wants to make it a show for the audience. But Trotman doesn’t really care about the audience. The show asks, amongst other things, when we make shows about our trauma, who are we making them for?

The show begins with Rix informing the audience about the content warnings. He wants to know how we feel about them. This is a show (or, not a show) about challenging the mental health system, and particularly the way that the system applies labels, which are rooted in capitalism and patriarchy. Throughout the show, Trotman dances, sings, spits out chocolate and crisps, has tantrums, strips, and dresses in a Waitrose shopping bag. It’s messy. It’s chaos. She screams and shouts in an in-yer-face sort of way, runs out of the room, speaks out text which is lyrical, rhythmical and full of poetic imagery.

Stylistically, I’d say it’s quite purposefully anti-style. Like the labels on her mental health, which Trotman protests, she refuses to put herself or this show in a box. She tells us she developed an eating disorder when she went to boarding school. I don’t know how common this is, but it’s certainly not the first time I’ve heard of this experience. She started writing comedy in a psychiatric ward last year, which has led to the creation of a show which fuses stand-up, performance art, comedy, poetry, movement, audience interaction, and shouting. Lots and lots of shouting.

It feels redundant to comment on what does and doesn’t work stylistically, because I don’t think that’s the point of the show. From my own experience, it was occasionally funny, often angry, frequently absurd, and sometimes quite sad. Trotman doesn’t shy away from the fact she’s an attention seeker, in fact she embraces it, and reminds us several times. She also acknowledges her privilege, as a white, middle class, privately educated woman, performing at the Edinburgh Festival. A lot of the show feels like she’s actively making it hard for us to watch. Whether that’s reminding us of her privilege, screaming at the top of her lungs, flirting quite menacingly with an audience member (specifically the one sat next to his partner), or an explosive pop of a crisp packet. And it is often uncomfortable viewing. Some bits are too long. The choices seem random. The structure is all over the place. I can’t say I enjoyed it. I’m not sure I’m meant to? But I’ve no doubt there will plenty of people who connect with this.

I think with more focus, more specificity, this could be a really groundbreaking piece of work. But it’s not there yet, and I’m not sure that’s the point anyway.

THAT’S NOT MY NAME at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – ZOO Southside – Studio

Reviewed on 16th August 2024

by Joseph Dunitz

THAT’S NOT MY NAME

THAT’S NOT MY NAME

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