Edinburgh Fringe 2019: Baby Reindeer review – Richard Gadd's gripping debut tells a haunting tale

Unsettling: Richard Gadd's debut play is a haunting tale of obsession
Veronica Lee6 August 2019

When Richard Gadd won the 2016 Edinburgh Comedy Award with Monkey See Monkey Do, about being the victim of a serious sexual assault, you might have thought he had revealed his darkest secret. But Baby Reindeer, his debut solo theatre show, charts perhaps an even more disturbing experience.

In 2013, Gadd was building his comedy career and working in a Holloway pub. One day, feeling sorry for Martha, a middle-aged customer who said she was a lawyer but couldn’t afford to buy a drink, he gave her a cup of tea on the house. That was his first mistake.

Slowly, in Jon Brittain’s gripping production, Gadd builds a picture of what became a living hell as Martha started bombarding Baby Reindeer, as she called him, with emails and phone messages, graduating to waiting outside his home, abusing his parents at their workplace and disrupting his live shows.

Over a four-year period she sent him thousands of ranting emails, tweets and Facebook messages (some of which are projected around the venue), plus hundreds of voicemails and letters. The police said they were unable to help.

The best theatre shows to see at Edinburgh Fringe 2019

1/10

It’s striking how everyday exchanges become loaded in a stalker’s mind. That kind offer of tea, a barman’s professional friendliness: Martha took those to mean Gadd, half her age and not interested, wanted to have a relationship with her.

Gadd is honest about his own mistakes, admitting that Martha’s interest in his comedy career rubbed his ego, and that a moment of thoughtless flirtation - just to give the other barmen a cheap laugh - encouraged someone who, one of them noted, was “dangerous”, and possibly mentally ill.

Baby Reindeer, a haunting, unsettling monologue about the nature of obsession, is coming to Bush Theatre in October. I recommend it.

Until August 25 (tickets.edfringe.com)

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