The show lives up to its title. There is a deep, intense, sadness to this story of a comedian confronting a past trauma. And there are songs. Their focus is on patriarchy; daddy issues, men with weird dating profiles, terrible boyfriends.

The other villain lurks around in the wings, showbiz. A profession that gives emerging artists glittering ambitions and allows established artists to behave like tyrants.

In the beginning Gwen Coburn plays it as if she has trouble remembering her jokes, and is chatting to the audience while hunting for the next thread. There’s a big cabaret number about bad sex, and she’s wearing a gorgeous jacket with a design of lurid green leaves over a black shirt and trousers. The costume is typical for her profession, but also symbolic of her interest in dark feminism and her depression. Her talent and professionalism battling with her vulnerability and pain is palpable on the tiny box stage.

Moving into a parody of a Ted Talk, here called a Sad Talk, the lurid green again seems the apt choice. The talk is about fears; the fear of public speaking, the fear of snakes, something that somewhat muddily combines later in the story she tells about Medusa, a beautiful maiden who was punished by the Goddess Athena for being raped by Poseidon in her Temple. Medusa, like many of the women who came forward that little bit too late during the #MeToo movement and caught the backlash, is monstered. In Greek myths it’s literal; she becomes a gorgon with a head full of snakes who can turn people to stone with her gaze.

In real life, survivors of abuse have a mixed reception. There’s sympathy and disbelief, anger fires off in all directions, at them for speaking out, at the abuser their actions, at those who knew and did nothing, at those who knew nothing and would rather it stayed that way. Coburn loved improv and improv taught her to say, ‘yes, and’. She admired the abuser. She repressed the boundary violations and tried to be ‘a sexy baby’, moving on with her life until it’s too much. She has post-traumatic stress disorder, she has flashbacks, she has nightmares, she smashes a wine glass and stands there bleeding, her showbiz jacket discarded on the floor, maybe like her dreams.

The people she worked with during the abuse were supportive, but her abuser didn’t lose his job. She tells us we can do something about this, that we are doing something about this. But, maybe, that’s a cover. Maybe she keeps playing out her tragedy wrapped up in a musical comedy, a Medusa who stays a maiden, quietly punished by our gaze.

‘Sad Girl Songs‘ is at Greenside @ George Street – Ivy Studio until Sat 23 Aug 205 at 15:10