Colin Hoult / Anna Mann: A Sketch Show for Depressives

Feeling down? In a funk? Black dog humping your leg? Then spend an evening with Anna Mann, the actor for whom all the world’s a stage of grief.

Colin Hoult—who you might recognise from TV's Derek and Being Human—plays Ms Mann, who you might recognise from her long career in brief theatrical runs. Unlike other therapists, Mann takes a tough luvvie approach. After attending (and taking over) a group session, she has turned her fellow depressives into characters, and their lives into sketches or vignettes. It’s group therapy as a one-woman show. (Well, she does have two buff stagehands, but they tend to suffer in silence.)

A word of warning from Mann herself: if you are actually suffering, don’t expect to be cured by the end of the show. The set-up is an excuse to indulge in some old-school thespianism. Every character is introduced with a costume change, some interpretive dance and an anecdote from Mann’s time treading the boards and stepping on people’s throats.

Hoult is smart at quickly defining his cast of lonely characters, each small detail making them small in their own way, but Mann is his most expansive creation: a dinosaur who ruled back on Play for Today. The edgy title and tart host might suggest it’s going to be harder than it is, but in truth A Sketch Show for Depressives is inclusive and deeply silly. It all hits its peak in a skit that could be called ‘Watch out, Werner Herzog’s About’.

Mann might not cure your depression, but she will make you laugh.