I APPLAUD TAKING SUCH A VISCERAL SUBJECT AS FERTILITY AND PLACING IT LITERALLY CENTRE STAGE

By Sophie Clark | Muck Rack Portfolio ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Press Invite

One of my favourite facts about the TV franchise, The Bachelor, is that any time a contestant refers to the show as “a process” or “an experience,” they have to retake the scene and call it “a journey.” Forget the fact they’re on a set in LA, sleep deprived, starving, they’re on a magical, incredible, “journey.”

According to Riki Lindhome, fertility is the same thing. Forget shooting up with IVF needles in parking lots, living for seven years without critical information about her uterus, or being told that the comedy videos that covered the cost for her treatments are now too controversial for adoption agencies — she too was told time and again that she was on “a journey.”

Isn’t that fun?! Right?!

Lindhome has managed to take all of the straightforwardly harrowing incidents of her “journey” and turn them into a delightful, disarmingly moving, and laugh-out-loud funny one-woman show.

Best known for her musical comedy as part of the duo Garfunkel and Oates, and recognisable as a recurring character on several hit sit-coms (maybe too recognisable, as she reveals in the show), Lindhome brings her fast-paced lyrical wit to tackle the most harrowing years of her life with an open heart.

The term “Millenial optimism” is a term often wielded by the more cynical Gen-Z to make fun of a generation who chose to fight the power with ukuleles and tiny moustache tattoos.

Although Lindhome should be the poster child of this type of “cringe”, she proves that it is possible to bring whimsical “quirky” charm to a serious subject without ever flattening the source material.

She has a naturally sunny demeanour, but that doesn’t prevent her from confronting something that is inescapably adult.

Musical comedy is not for everyone, but Lindhome does a great job reminding people why she’s been famous in that sphere for so long.

Despite the subject matter being as intimate as the state of Lindhome’s uterine lining, she does a masterful job at widening the scope to look at the big picture of how women are societally silenced over not just fertility but so many aspects of adult life.

I applaud her for taking such a visceral subject as fertility — a subject that people are told to be quiet about, to not bother other people with — and placing it literally center stage.

Riki Lindhome: Dead Inside is running at Soho Theatre until Saturday 18 April.

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