When I read that Sofie Hagen was making every venue anxiety-safe for the Shimmer Shatter tour, I was intrigued. Comedy is a great form of escapism, but it can also be nerve-wracking for audience members who struggle with anxiety and dread navigating a packed theatre, let alone the thought of being picked on in the front row.
Like many other comedians on the circuit today (Susan Calman, Harriet Dyer, Richard Gadd and Felicity Ward, to name a few), Hagen is honest about her own mental health issues and talks about them freely in her set. However, this tour has an added bonus: anyone with anxiety can email her in advance to make special arrangements at the venue, such as using a quieter entrance or arriving before the rest of the audience. For someone who says she’d “prefer to be where people aren’t”, Hagen can certainly sympathise with them.
Despite her dreading social events and claiming “I don’t do fun”, I’d hazard a guess she’s doing something right, having mastered comedy in her second language (she grew up in Denmark) and reached the final of various comedy awards, including the Funny Women Awards in 2012. Shimmer Shatter is only her second hour-long solo show, building on the success of last year’s Edinburgh debut, Bubblewrap, which scooped Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards. No pressure, then.
The mental health angle of Shimmer Shatter isn’t rammed down your throat, and any mention of anxiety, eating disorders or depression doesn’t become a punchline. Instead, it builds throughout the hour, from the mention of her grandma as “the enabler” (classic therapy-speak) to the online commenter singling out her “sadness” and, much later, when she describes feeling ‘broken’.
This is not a therapy session or a pity party with added laughs – it’s the usual comedy themes of failed relationships and awkward family lives, which just happen to be seen through the prism of mental illness and told by a very genuinely funny woman. It’s about the times you need to hide in a public toilet and just breathe, whilst the so-called sane people around you do mad things, like run up skyscrapers for fun, or downright creepy things, like try to pay you for a comedy gig with sex. Hagen’s the one with a therapist, but she can spot the dysfunctional parts of other people’s lives – an obvious example being the absent and unemotional father she barely sees – crystal clear. She’s also smart enough, unlike some people who shall remain nameless, to know that dragons aren’t real.
As she mentions near the close of the show, it’s estimated one third of Americans are introverts, so God knows how many British introverts are out there (Hagen’s tongue-in-cheek estimate of 70% probably isn’t far off the mark). Maybe that’s another reason we get her.
Shimmer Shatter is a celebration of doing your own thing, avoiding the so-called “fun” activities that make your blood boil, and being okay with that. Drag yourself out of your comfort zone to see this show and you won’t regret it, because Sofie Hagen does do fun.
For future tour dates, see sofiehagen.com.
