This review is from 'Sane New World's 2015 run.
We get an explicit view of Ruby Wax’s downward dog in her new show: arms outstretched, head tucked in, arse pointing to the heavens. ‘I have to do my yoga and pilates now,’ she explains. ‘I don’t have time in my real life.’ With our phones and our appointments and our important jobs, we’re all too busy, she says. But fear not, Wax is on a one-woman mission to de-stress the world.
Taking the form of a kind of lecture about how we need to chill the hell out, ‘Sane New World’ sits somewhere between stand-up comedy and theatre, and it’s a whole lot of fun. Standing alone on a stage covered in green grass and cushions, she dishes out a barrel-load of sharp one-liners. ‘I wanted to learn about the mind because I had lost mine,’ she explains. Her next show, about her dandruff problem, will be called ‘Flakes the Musical’ she says flashing a toothy smile. Onstage she’s a firecracker, constantly moving, one minute having a little lie down, the next twerking her butt off.
Wax is her very own case study – she remorselessly rips the piss out of all her own insecurities while demonstrating the science behind the cognitive therapy of mindfulness. Wax is riding on the back of the fact that she’s just done an MA in the subject at Kellogg College, Oxford, and she genuinely believes that thinking a bit more about where we are and what we’re doing will help us. And because of that, the piece is never preachy, it’s a large-hearted, funny attempt to literally change your mind.
The second half is an informal chat with the audience, and her easy charm and off-the-cuff humour makes this almost as funny as the bit that’s scripted. Truthfully, ‘Sane New World’ is a show that everyone should probably see. You’d be mad not to.