Character Flaw

Pip Dawson has spent her whole life day dreaming. She’s told off at school. She can’t finish her dissertation. She jumps from job to job, friend to friend, boyfriend to boyfriend, losing people along the way because she just can’t seem to focus.  She assumes everyone hates her because she’s just not funny enough. So when she’s diagnosed with ADHD, it’s almost a relief.

Character Flaw is Pip’s show. It’s a fast, funny exploration of her life with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (there are two kinds, don’t you know? And lucky Pip has both. With a side order of anxiety).  She’s endearingly chaotic, spinning each of her foibles or failings into a funny anecdote. She skips through her frustrations at school, her difficulties navigating practical tasks, her fallings out with bosses, friends and boyfriends, her (often unwanted) hyperfocus –  the spectrum of  manifestations of her ADHD – with a whip quick wit and a super smart self-deprecating glint in her eye. But Pip’s real problem is she wants us to like her.

This is a one woman comedy show, neatly constructed to inform the audience enough, if you don’t know much about ADHD, without patronising and to provide a thoughtful insight into a day in the life of her head.  The production is typically Fringe – she has a bag of props and a chair by way of a set – with pre-recorded sound, music, sound effects, and considered lighting to shade her changes in mood and tone.

The sucker punch comes at the close of the show when she reveals all isn’t sunny and funny in her world. Dawson rails against the odds that were so resoundingly stacked against her, and against so many neurodiverse people finding the help and support they need to live with a little more self-love in today’s society. She’s a textbook late diagnosis case. But far more importantly, she’s a smart, insightful, endearing demonstration of the fact that ADHD doesn’t need to mean deficit.