one4review | On 07, Aug 2024

Juliette Burton achieves what she sets out to do and sends the audience out the door on the whole more uplifted than when they came in. Some came in quite enthused already, but Ms Burton has verve and energy and kept us on track and engaged right through to the end, and not only because of her promise of badges.

The show’s about hope, and how that can sometimes be the most rebellious and transgressive thing we can do. Ms Burton shares her experience of poor mental health, and some of the things that helped her through. We’re invited, waiting the queue, to share our own reasons to be hopeful, a contribution to the resource Ms Burton is compiling for folks to look at when they need it.

That all sounds a bit dour and performatively good, but it’s anything but. Juliette Burton has an air of insouciance and devil-may-care, alongside her massive energy and warmth, that means the show is entertaining and funny as well as uplifting. She’s irreverent and subversive, sincere and playful by turns, and indeed, a little bit punk. With that energy alongside a willingness to work hard – at hope, and at comedy – it’s easy to see why she’s sold out previous runs.

Reviewed by Laura

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose
19:40
Until 16th