Last year a plethora of comedians talked about their ADHD at the Edinburgh Fringe. This year it looks like autism is on the agenda. Stand-up Joe Wells has a show about being an autistic father, Canada's Graham Kay dissects his relationship with his autistic brother.
Pierre Novellie is Fringe-bound but perversely not doing a show about his Autism. Instead he has followed in the footsteps of best-seller Fern Brady and written a book about it, Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things? which was published this week.
A Fringe highlight could be Josephine Lacey's unashamedly intimate debut full-length show. In Autism Mama the spirited Londoner reveals how she helped her autistic son through puberty. Maybe "lubricated" is more apt than "helped". Sit at the front and you are in danger of receiving a spurt of Liquid Silk lube during her sex education lesson. Adolescence is tough for anyone. An autistic adolescence is tough with knobs on.
Lacey's tale is entertaining and enlightening. Despite her lightness of touch there have clearly been seriously challenging difficulties along the way. When she received a call from school about his inappropriate behaviour and was addressed as "Miss Lacey" she knew instantly that there was a problem. They usually called her Josephine.
Life is particularly hard at home because her son has a smorgasbord of neurological issues. His Sensory Processing Disorder means that wearing clothes is painful. His mother allows him to strip in his room but nowhere else, a rule he almost adheres to. On a positive note he is a musical savant and plays classical music beautifully.
Lacey certainly sees the funny side of his neurodiversity. He also has echolalia, a condition where someone parrots phrases exactly as the first time they hear them. A laugh-out-loud section is an anecdote about how at one point her previously non-verbal child unexpectedly started speaking with his tiny Irish grandmother's accent.
Autism Mama is not floor-to-ceiling giggles. There are times when it feels like a Theatre-In-Education performance, particularly when phallic balloons are inflated for illustrative purposes. But whenever things get too close to lecture terrain a comic aside lightens the tone. Part-Irish, part-Jamaican, Lacey marked her son's father's death with "a spliff and a Guinness".
Despite claiming that her debut is just a smutty story, this informative show offers strategies for anyone in a similar situation. Lacey has dealt with her predicament head on with the devotion and understanding that one would expect from a loving mother and the humour that one would expect from a skilful comedian.
