Riding on a wave of confidence after being called a MILF by an eighteen-year-old man in a bar, Sasha Ellen returns to the Fringe with a show all about mental health, your thirties, and uses for that one chair in the bedroom. With a tender honesty that grates joyfully against a wicked sense of humour, ‘My MILF-shake Brings All the Boys to the Yard’ is a stand-up delight that largely knows how to push the audience’s buttons.

Ellen is upfront with her mental and physical wellbeing throughout the show, but in a very matter of fact way rather than as a means to garner sympathy. Put bluntly, she’s too busy cracking wise and making you laugh for any of that. It just isn’t that kind of show. Her experiences of therapy in particular form the butt of many jokes, encouraging you to laugh with Ellen at the sheer absurdity and judgemental attitude laced within medical reports. It is a beautifully frank and largely upbeat set that avoids some of the classic pitfalls of mental health jokes in comedy.

Considering how strange the subject matters get, particularly with regards to turtles, this is not a particularly abstract or overly weird hour of comedy. Ellen’s experiences will likely resonate with many, in large part due to how she doesn’t leave the mundane or everyday details out of her stories. She moves between different topics with ease and at pace, but always with an overarching focus about how her experiences as a mid-thirties woman with anxiety, depression, and in her own words ‘a tiny little beard’ (it will make sense), frame her perception of all these things. Ellen provides a fruitful example of how a highly specific, personal set of experiences can have value for everyone. 

‘My MILF-shake Brings All the Boys to the Yard’ doesn’t rewrite the comedy rule book, and it doesn’t need to. It being an hour of Ellen talking about all the weird, wonderful, and at times strangely recorded elements of her life is all it needs to be. It is a fine hour of stand-up from which everyone will take something. 

‘My MILF-Shake Bring All the Boy to the Yard‘ is at Just the Tonic at Cabaret Voltaire – Just the Common Room until Sun 25 Aug 2024 (except Mon 12) at 18:30