Using the power of truth

As a storyteller Hagen is absolutely mesmerising. Her style is deceptively simple but her directness and honesty take us straight to the heart of the matter.

We are there with her, a little five-year-old girl being told terrible lies. And we understand how hard it was for her to feel angry about it and why it took years for the anger to finally emerge.

We laugh as she tells how the unlikely story of how a meeting with the members of Westlife finally helped her find her voice.

There are lots of funny stories in this show but at its heart is a willingness to tackle deep and painful issues head-on.

Hagen actively encourages others with severe anxiety to come to her gigs and does everything she can to reassure them. The trigger warnings may seem over the top but they are there for a reason.

Sofie Hagen is a brilliant comic story teller, but the truth is a powerful thing. CLAIRE SMITH

0 Dane Sofie Hagen is a gifted storyteller with secrets to share O’meara, a highly strung family man estranged from his late magician father – the eponymous Ridolphi – after being overlooked in his will. His interest in the old man is rekindled, however, when an Interpol agent calls inquiring after a forged Goya painting. Rifling through a suitcase of the Great Ridolphi’s belongings, Victor uncovers a series of clues that lead him to Ireland, Madrid, Paris, Vienna and Hungary, encountering a wild assortment of characters including a die-hard debt-collector and a heavily tattooed woman named Lydia (a delightful nod to the Marx Brothers).

Writer Chris Isaacs niftily anchors much of the plot to physical objects: a walking stick, a magnifying glass, a key on a string of rosary beads. These various Macguffins provide a sturdy foundation of realism amid the high-flying adventures; it’s somewhat unsatisfying, therefore, when the climax drifts into more abstract, fantastical imagery, leaving the untethered tail-end of the yarn floating ambiguously. Still, it’s an enjoyable romp while it lasts. NIKI BOYLE Just the Tonic at The Mash House (Venue 288) JJJ Phil won the Fosters Panel Prize in 2014 with Funz and Gamez and since then he has pretty much always looked back. To be fair, his follow-up solo show was phenomenal. This one, not so much.

Ellis is pretty much incapable of being bad. He has funny bones, extremely long ones. And his giant, confused child-man persona is unhateable. So even if the premise is thin (it is) and the material sketchy (it is) you still giggle your way through an hour in his company, which is pretty much what you want from a comedy show.

Calling his style bumbling would be unfair, because he doesn’t look like he has it together enough to bumble. But he is undeniably funny. His ever-patient, invisible straight man deserves stars of his own, as does his skilled propmaker. Many, many dildos died to make this show. Make it worth their while and go. KATE COPSTICK Welcome to the House of Pigs, a renowned if down-atheel cabaret bar threatened with closure to make way for yet another chain pub.

This sad situation brings consternation to the venue’s staff and the “multitude of world-famous variety acts” who tread its boards – a mixed bag of a dozen or so bizarro performers, each played in a different wig by Phil Dunning. There’s Sonia Jackson, the assistant front-of-house supervisor with implausible memories of childhood stardom; Fat Roy, the unreconstructed stand-up for whom political incorrectness and gastric mishap go hand in hand; Magic Lisa, an ever so underwhelming conjuror; a bevy of more or less deluded chanteuses, and many more.

Dunning’s style is campy, knowing, wild-eyed and surreal, buoyed by ceaseless energy, sinuous physicality, tremulous vocal renditions and a deep attachment to the bathetically grotesque. Preposterous parodies of American pop culture – from Disney romance and Moulin Rouge to frat-boy homoerotica – alternate with a kind of affectionate freakshow tour of the British regions. Some characters could fill an hour in themselves while others get old in three minutes. Overall, a world without room for the House of Pigs would be a blander, duller one for sure. BEN WALTERS Black Market (Venue 399) J You know that bit in horror movies – the moment when you’re supposed to think the psycho is dead then he comes back to life – repeatedly? That’s exactly the feeling you get during the grotesquely protracted climax of this gruellingly unamusing one-woman show parodying teenage slasher flicks. Written and performed by Brenna Glazebrook (who only has herself to blame) it’s a tortuous, seemingly endless, gaze into a witless abyss that’ll have you inwardly longing for the sweet, sweet, merciful embrace of death long before the end. Truly horrific. RORY FORD