Hide My Porn ****

Letters have power. Often they’re just junk mail of course, or bills to be ignored, to be paid even, if that is your volition. Then there are happier communications – invitations to weddings, greetings cards and, for those of a certain era, love letters. But then there are those that change your life irrevocably. This is Joe Rawling’s deeply personal story.

Spoiler alerts : 1. he has contracted cancer, but survives; 2. this production is funny.

Joe is informed, chillingly, dispassionately, that he is being referred for a series of consultations and investigations. He had started passing out and at first the doctors are unable to find anything sufficiently awry to be the cause. To coin a phrase, he has confounded medical science. However, a consultant eventually realises that he has an ominous shape hiding behind his sternum. In a display of cognitive dissonance, the medical team are self-congratulatory to uncover the source of Joe’s illness.

The shadow on the x-ray is the size of a satsuma. He has testicular cancer in the chest – who knew that was a thing?

Joe recounts his journey, in which he undergoes distressing treatments, invasive and painful procedures. This included having what appears to be a knitting needle inserted into his chest, evoking winces from the audience. His body weakens, he has little or no immune system, spectacularly badly timed with a Global pandemic breaking out. He suffers, iteratively, erosion of dignity. He looks on as his friends and family are powerless to help.

The prognosis is that he may only have two weeks to live.

He writes what he hopes will not prove to be a posthumous letter, including the somewhat facetious request to his friend to hide his porn, giving rise to the name of the show. This happily proves unnecessary.

If all of this sounds a little bleak, it’s really not. Joe is a skilled performer and character actor, controlling the narrative with wit, warmth and excellent comic timing. His depictions of the five hospital Karens was executed with aplomb. Productions in which solo performers describe their suffering are frequently self-indulgent and sometimes even mawkish, but Hide My Porn is deliberately the antithesis of this.

Joe leaves us with the message that one in two people will contract cancer in their lives., meaning that you or someone you love will suffer at some point. This is talented, extremely moving, storytelling with a simple upbeat and poignant message – laugh at it.