Even if Robyn Reynolds wasn’t so charming and funny, you’d still be knocked flat by her sheer resilience. This exceptional debut hour is rammed full of hair-raising tales that would have left many a gibbering wreck, yet this precociously entertaining performer reroutes any potential melodrama into her stage presence, which is flamboyantly theatrical.

A semi-reformed ‘people pleaser’, Reynolds spent most of her years as a coiled ball of rage. Coiled, because at a compact 4’11” any time she showed her temper in public, it was always dismissed as simply adorable. But having grown with her alcoholic, narcissistic mother, a certain core of curdling anger is probably understandable.

What’s worse is that despite travelling across the world from her native Gloucester to Australia to assert her independence it takes two further instances of horrendous, and potentially life-threatening, medical misogyny bordering on neglect to learn to advocate for herself.

As soon as the all-singing, all-dancing presentation is slightly peeled but to show the raw, gleaming viscera of the narrative, you question if there’s going to be a horrible clash of content vs performance. Yet it works, in a very similar way to Alex Berr’s brilliant ‘How to Kill a Mouse‘ because the empathy and pathos of the hour is never undermined by its buoyant tone.

Yet, what Robyn has had to deal with is often brutal and harrowing. You do get a sense that Robyn’s madcap exuberance is worn like armour (her claim that it’s all fine because she can laugh about it is slightly belied by the undeniable brimming emotion in her eyes come the end), but what a performer.

Alternatively confessional, coy, kittenish, and clamorous, she tries on multiple personas. Reynolds revels in the juxtaposition between the, let’s say evocative, descriptions she gives of a personal ailment onstage to how she sheepishly informs her doctor. She bursts into bellows-lunged pastiches of Cabaret-style show tunes. She faux-bashfully confesses her fondness for stentorian MILFs and bolshy Karens. She shamelessly flirts with an obviously very not single man in the front row. It’s a truly multifaceted performance that always strives for humour first-and-foremost, trusting that her story is riveting enough that the naturally chronological narrative will take care of herself.

With such an exhaustive range, some parts land a little less well (pure personal preference finds her stand-up more successful than the musical numbers). But even though not everyone in the room is going with it, Reynolds clearly finds this hilarious. ‘You,’ she mock scolds one gentleman, ‘You haven’t laughed once!’ If you needed any further evidence of her hard-won unflappability here it is.

Reynolds has had to overcome too much to let a few grumpy punters bring her down. It’s testament to who she’s become as a person as well as her skills as a comedian that you come away from ‘What Doesn’t Kill You’ admiring her indefatigable cheer as much as her performance. More than anything, one can only hope that this show could go at least a little way to inspire the women in the audience to assert their right to be taken seriously when it comes to medical matters.

‘What Doesn’t Kill You‘ is at Assembly Roxy – Snug until Sun 24 Aug 2025