Laughing 'Til I Die

Jacintha is a young woman nearing the end of her annual six-months refurbishment in a psychiatric hospital.

She is a medical card patient, and much appreciates the improved hotellike standards since the arrival of upper-crust patients, like housewives on HRT.

While waiting for an appointment with her shrink, for whom she invents lurid dreams, she drifts into a monologue.

Her fags have been stolen, and her concealed vodka supply.

At first she blames her friend Avril, but then remembers that she has recently committed suicide. When you're afloat on electric treatment and valium, it's easy to forget.

We hear about her obsessive parents, sex in the wards, the different therapies and the use she makes of them.

Nurses and nuns tend to be pilloried, and a spell in solitary, padded-cell confinement is narrated as a mini-holiday in itself.

But, as the day of Jacintha's release draws near, her despair of ever coping with the world outside overwhelms her.

The script, overloaded with verbal crudities, is a mixed achievement. Some of the humour is too extravagantly black, and the scenario occasionally veers to the bathetic.

Maeve Coogan, who wrote the solo piece, also plays it and her performance is strong enough, growing in intensity throughout, to achieve final conviction.

This short play first appeared in last autumn's Dublin Fringe Festival, when it was well received.

It certainly has enough to warrant an investment of the required hour or so by theatregoers.