The programme blurb for Eden Sher’s show will go down as one of the greatest under-sells of the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe. Yes, she was on a Sitcom, ABC’s Award-winning, much loved sitcom, ‘The Middle’ which ran for 9 years till 2018. Yes, she hoarded those 9 years of scripts, her iconic character Sue Heck being so intimately intertwined with her identity that the line sometimes blurs.
If ‘I Was On A Sitcom’ was only a comic exploration of this peculiarly thespian crisis, it would still be a solid show. After all, Sher is an assured, and accomplished performer with a strong sense of timing, and a touch of the clown’s excesses. However, ‘I Was On A Sitcom’ is so, so much more.
For into Sue’s immediately post-‘The Middle’ life, comes pregnancy. Cue delight and some well-crafted vignettes detailing Eden’s pre-delivery idle. A world of quasi-psychotic home-redecoration, and plans for a ‘beautiful’ birth. I say vignettes, because Sher is never so lazy as to simply tell you her story. No, this fine actor re-inhabits her previous self, playing up her experiences, thoughts and ideas as the best sitcom writers do.
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No dull exposition here. Instead we are introduced to Eden’s bold plans for the the nursery, it’s minimalist ethos, and bespoke colour palette. It will be a magnum opus of parental creation – and an invitation to disaster only in part due to husband Cronnie’s very different perception of colour to hers.
If it stopped there, if it was only Eden confronting the conflict between motherhood and those piles of scripts dominating the intended nursery, it would still be a very good show. The writing is sharp, the performance as good as any you’ll see this August. There’s no lazy exposition here, no assumptions that you know who she is. Her ‘getting to know me’ opening is handled lightly, and offers plenty of laughs.
But she’s not done, far from it, and frankly I salute the mental fortitude she will need to play this show through to the 28th. Sue’s pregnancy you see, was not easy, far from it, and this is when the sheer cleverness of the show also becomes clear.
For whilst the show’s opening is concerned with a delightfully screwball account of the biology of twins, what begins as an allegory for her relationship to her character Sue, soon finds extremely real world relevance. What follows, essentially a prolonged, and gripping finale, is her invitation inside the fraught world of her high-risk pregnancy. That she continues to be laugh-out loud funny makes her a comedian/performer to watch. There are other ways to talk of difficult things, but few which blend such abundant charm with the darkness.
What she experienced was/is horrible, there is no other word. Horrible in the way that leaves people changed – permanently. I’m not saying this show is a form of therapy, but it’s nakedly cathartic for both her and her audience. This is the comedy perched on the flip-side of tragedy, a hunt for reasons to laugh amidst alarming medical procedures, and terrifying, surprising, things appearing on live sonograms.
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All the while, she is continually creating the world of that time in her life, summoing voices and offering snippets of personality to populate it. This is a bold, ambitious show, with lots of narrative moving parts, but she juggles it effortlessly. This is the full, technicolour absurdity of life, which doesn’t cease simply because bad things are happening. It’s funny, because life is funny, and because Eden Sher is highly skilled in taking such quirky normalcy and dialling it up to the laugh out loud hilarious.
This is permission to laugh along with someone sharing a tough – but not ultimately grim – story. Still she is brave enough to trust the audiences with her true feelings, her lowest ebbs. ‘It’s possible for something to be completely devastating’ she says, ‘and excruciatingly boring’. It’s funny, as they say, because it’s true. Examined as a piece of writing ‘I Was On A Sitcom’ just does a lot of things right. It finds its end in its beginning, and makes good on the warm-hearted promise of its opening. Which isn’t to say you won’t hold your breath in fear, and a touch of horror, along the way: you will.
But you’ll be glad you went.
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