Welcome to Lachlan Thomas’ sixth birthday party. You’re in the safe hands of ace children’s entertainer Hannah Banana. Expect fun games, ‘absolute bops’, and prizes galore. But you’ll likely be a bit young to notice that Hannah is sweating out a monstrous hangover and is wading through the deepest part of an existential crisis. Aptly for the city that gave us Robert Louis Stevenson, Hannah Morton‘s debut hour is excellent character comedy of a real Jekyll and Hyde duality, although the core of sadness at the show’s heart ensures her onstage persona never extends to the monstrous.

‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ see Hannah alternate between her ‘professional’ guise of Hannah Banana, the relentlessly upbeat kiddie-wrangler extraordinaire, and the fourth-wall breaking Hannah Morton, who is finding that the void is very much staring back into her. She might have found a silver lining in that being a children’s entertainer offers many transferrable skills (she’s a legend at home hen parties), but the jokes become increasingly bitter as the hour progresses and the humour darker.

Such is the extent to which Morton embodies the onstage ‘Hannah Morton’, it’s far from obvious just how uncomfortably close to autobiographical the show really is. The frustration and impotence that emanates from the stage is convincingly palpable. She brings a similar madcap and confessional energy Rachel Jackson brought to her shows about comparable experiences on the fringes of the Scottish arts industry.

The balance between the two threads of the show leans in favour of Morton’s ‘real’ persona, and that’s the correct decision. As fun as the party segments are (and fair play to the American lady plucked from the audience, who plays the role of Lachlan Thomas with phenomenal gusto), the resonance of the show, and most of the humour, lies in the pathos of scuppered ambition and unfulfilled dreams. Although, on a purely comedic level, the tale of leading a gaggle of six-year-olds through the ‘Cha Cha Slide’ while enduring crippling menstrual cramps is a highlight.

On the most basic level, ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ is a modern variation of the old joke, ‘But doctor, I am Pagliacci/ Grimaldi’. This contemporary spin on the tears of a clown trope comes with added subtextual mummy issues (made more spicy by the fact that Hannah’s mother, national treasure Elaine C. Smith, is in the audience), and an understated fury at the sheer weight of unpaid emotional labour women are forced to undertake.

Returning to the Jekyll and Hyde comparisons, there is a long-standing tradition in British comedy of mediocrity turned monstrous by thwarted ambition – Rigsby, Brittas, Brent, Partridge to name a few. The Hannah Morton presented here works precisely because she resists that extreme. It’s painfully human because she’s self-aware, and there’s a real skill in how Morton still manages to find the laughs given that her onstage persona is not such an easy, oblivious figure of fun.

A much darker and complex prospect than it initially appears, ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ is a rich character comedy that plays with multiple versions of its creator. It shows Hannah Morton to be as formidable a writer as she is a performer, and proves once again that comedy and tragedy are merely a hair’s breadth apart.

‘Cha Cha Real Smooth‘ is at Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower – Eve until Sun 24 Aug 2025 at 17:00