At a festival with 3,600 shows, some will feel samey. But no other performance is likely to resemble Josephine Lacey’s. Autism Mama may not sound that distinctive on paper: it is about Lacey’s experience of parenting a son with autism and sensory processing disorder – slotting neatly, you might think, into the category marked “comedy shows about neurodiversity and challenging personal experiences”. But it never feels like that in Lacey’s handling – and you’d better believe handling is the right term. The 56-year-old’s debut hour is rude, precise, wickedly humorous and – a lovely quality, this – glowing with maternal love.
Not that she is showy or sentimental: she is a straight-talking Londoner (“That can fuck right off!”) with not the slightest soppiness about her. The biggest-hitting set-piece advertises gleeful schadenfreude at the death of her son’s biological dad. However, usually love and not loathing is the top note, as Lacey talks us through her life as “both mum and dad” to a son with dysregulation and his experience of puberty. On one level, that leads to embarrassing predicaments in public places, like the supermarket trip interrupted by Callum saying “Ooh I like your breasts” to a passing shopper. On another, it finds Callum experiencing pain and uncertainty in his changing body and its changing reactions.
