The Wheelchair on My Face

Bewley’s Café Theatre ***

A GOOD COMIC knows how to turn a physical quirk into idiosyncrasy, and Sonya Kelly has often used her distinctive glassy stare as the basis for building character, most notably on TV in

The Savage Eye

. In

The Wheelchair on my Face,

Kelly’s ocular disability provides the subject for a delightfully wacky account of her myopic childhood.

The obstacles she encounters are both physical and social – how can you smile back at people when you don’t know that they are engaging with you? – but Kelly finds hilarious ways of compensating.

In fact it is not until she is seven that people realise that she is practically blind and she is rehabilitated with glasses.

Director Gina Moxley injects theatricality into what might otherwise seem like a stand-up routine, but Kelly herself deserves most of the plaudits for her tight script and engaging performance. Terrific early evening fun.

Runs until September 24th