“Malignant Humour
Smock Alley Theatre, Boys’ School
★★★★★
Hannah stumbles upon a lump on her collarbone, which her medical specialist refers to as a “clavicle”. When she optimistically suggests it’s nothing significant, it turns out it is. The lump needs a biopsy. The doctor schedules the procedure for Tuesday as Thursdays are overly packed. Hannah gets diagnosed with three malignant tumours, and when she reacts with tears, her doctor reproaches her for her emotional outpour.
Her doctor insists she should be mature about it and that crying shouldn’t be tolerated.
After being a hit at the Scene & Heard festival in January, Malignant Humour, set to be a part of this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival, makes a triumphant return to Smock Alley Theatre.
Hannah Gumbrielle’s autobiographical saga is centred around her adolescent fight with lymphoma. Before one enters the show, a disclaimer is placed, cautioning viewers about explicit medical content. However, the content is more agile and comical than one would expect from a lymphoma-themed drama. The announcement of a scan comes with a list of potential side effects. Of course, Hannah focuses on the most embarrassing one, worrying about wetting herself.
The review of Malignant Humour remarks the solo performance as hilariously more entertaining than any cancer-themed show should be.
Seeking to pacify Hannah’s escalating stress, a nurse compares her current situation with the harrowing medical conditions of the medieval era. Hannah, identifying as a “queer woman with a vision of minus-seven” and now living with cancer, wryly observes she wouldn’t stand a chance during those harsh times.
Gumbrielle’s performance is of exceptional brevity and brilliance; it’s a solo spectacle accentuated with taped voices, remarkable Blonde’s Heart of Glass melodies, and a radio programme bending into a tormenting introspective critique. The lengthy periods of chemo and radio therapies are distilled into two-touching stories of Hannah’s mum brushing Hannah’s thinning hair using aluminium foil, and a nurse with a French accent likening Hannah’s crimson hued doxorubicin treatment to Grenadine.
These memories build up into an extraordinary aerial performance, with Gumbrielle spinning and tumbling in a staggering manner, mirroring the physiological whirlwind brought about by her cancer therapy side effects. She identifies herself as a versatile “aerial artist specializing in cocoon, trapeze, counterweight and harness”, humbly adding, “I ascend things and revolve rapidly”.
Indeed, she does, and her narrative strides are as agile as she is.
Deeper within the animated humour lie sombre exchanges with condescending doctors and a variety of responses from medical staff, from soft coos to stern reprimands. Gumbrielle, nevertheless, ascends above the cacophony towards a victorious climax.
The show continues at the Smock Alley Theatre, as a part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until Sunday, September 15th.