She’s “Losing It” and not ashamed to talk about it. Outspoken comedian Ruby Wax will be performing her new stand up show at the Lincoln Theatre Royal on Thursday, April 29th.
The show follows a successful 25 years in the world of comedy and Wax is keen to keep reinventing her shows and use music expressively: “It isn’t stand-up and it isn’t cabaret, we were trying to make a new form.”
Wax says the music is used as a soundtrack to the show, much like in a film, to add feeling to her show.
“I’ve always wanted to reinvent, so I did that in TV. Then I couldn’t think of anything after reality TV and that was me flummoxed. I thought: ‘Well, I have to reinvent something’, so I reinvented myself and went to school and learned psychology and now I’m studying neuroscience,” she says.
So what exactly is “Losing It” about? Wax believes it to be a kind of instruction manual: “When you become a mother or a father or a teenager, you can sometimes feel like an outsider, and you need some sort of guide as to how to fit in.
“A lot of people think ‘how do I become a successful businessman’ or ‘how do I carry off a certain lifestyle?’ We get samples in magazines, but we don’t actually know how to do it as people. So the show throws up questions and I give the answers which are hilarious but true.”
Having recently turned to neuroscience, the subject unsurprisingly plays a big part in the show, though the focus isn’t all about mental illness: “The stress is that this isn’t a show for mentally ill people or a lecture on depression,” Wax says, “I never mention the word depression. It’s about our own foibles and the truth about them without being embarrassed.
“In the very end of the show, I reveal I need to find out how my brain works in order to understand myself. That’s the way the world is going now. I think everyone in the world is interested to know how the brain works.”
The comedienne is very passionate about work for the mentally ill with a donation being made to Comic Relief for every ticket sold. “It makes you feel like you’re putting your money where your mouth is. With Comic Relief you can always trace what they’re doing, so that makes me feel more secure. At least you know where the money is going,” Wax says.
“With mental illness, the numbers are going up and it’s not something you can pretend doesn’t exist – it now affects one in four people. And it’s primarily because nobody wants to talk about it.”
Quite clearly Wax isn’t one of those people and it will be no holds barred when she performs her show in Lincoln.
Tickets for the show are £18 and £20.