Edinburgh has turned into a therapy session

Therapy seems to be the defining theme of this year’s Edinburgh festival. Many performers are saddled with personal demons or anxieties which they want to alleviate by yelling about them in front of a paying audience. Professor Tanya Byron puts it like this in the Pleasance brochure: ‘Therapy is where art and story-telling combine.’

At the Pleasance, Joe Sellman-Leava is seeking catharsis through his show It’s The Economy, Stupid! (Jack Dome, until 26 August). He begins by delivering a friendly lecture about credit, interest rates, retail banks, Adam Smith and so on. After 40 minutes, he loses his cool and starts to rant and swear at the crowd about his personal lack of funds. Overwhelmed by financial distress he collapses on the floor in a quivering heap. When he gets back to his feet he explains that despite working for 17 hours a day, he’s stuck in a leaky, rat-infested flat. His difficulties began in childhood, he continues, when he saw his parents lose their small business and the family home at the same time. They responded to bankruptcy and eviction, however, by having a third child. Perhaps he inherited his lack of financial acumen from them. Hard to say. This show crashes and burns like the stock-market on a bad day. A cheerier ending might help.

The Outrun (Church Hill Theatre, until 24 August) examines various cures for alcoholism. Adapted from Amy Liptrot’s memoir of the same name, the show is set in Orkney where Amy battles her day-long craving for booze by working in menial jobs. She escapes to Edinburgh University to study literature and later to London where she leads a wild, rootless, hedonistic life that leaves her unfulfilled. In rehab, she meets an elderly woman from Bristol who keeps relapsing.