Last night I had the privilege of being in the audience for the play, “My Fretty Friend”. The entire performance was conducted by two actors and was absolutely hilarious while at the same time packing a punch about mental health. So why is it that this so was so special for me?

For a start, the two actors were my son Timothy and his wife Ruth. They wrote, acted, directed and produced the entire production. They backed themselves with their hard-earned cash, took the risk and decided to make the performing passion of their lives come to life on stage. I was so proud of them at multiple levels…..what I didn’t expect was just how impactful the show would be.

The play focused on a teenager named Amy who had severe anxiety problems. The character of Anxiety was brilliantly portrayed as Amy’s thoughts and this sense of getting an insight into how Amy was thinking was further enhanced by a rope linking both the characters.

I found the play helped me get a much deeper insight into what it means to suffer from anxiety. A surprise occurred when the character of depression was introduced after a school team sports star suffered a debilitating injury. This further opened what is often seen as the “taboo” subject of mental health.

During the performance the audience was laughing one minute, and the next I could see tears trickling down their face as the aspects of “anxiety” and “depression” took shape on the stage. The ninety minutes seemed to fly by as we became wrapped up in Amy’s journey of wrestling with her “Fretty Friend”.