Baby Reindeer | Edinburgh Show Comes To London
Last Updated: 9th September 2019
If you’re a big fan of comedian Richard Gadd…
…he’d probably rather you didn’t go to this show.
It’s the horrifying, true story of his experience with a stalker; a woman named Martha who went from perfect stranger to a haunting, omnipresent shadow in the space of three years.
Baby Reindeer (the nickname Gadd got from his stalker) is his first solo show, and has made it down to West London’s Bush Theatre after a critically acclaimed run at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Through his gripping, spine-tingling monologues; recordings of friends and family; and the texts, emails and messages of his stalker flashing incessantly onto the ceiling, his increasingly terrifying ordeal unfolds before your eyes. It starts off innocently – he gets chatting to Martha when she comes into the bar he works in. At first, they even flirt a little. But what follows is a tangled mesh – she comes to his shows, tracks down his family and sends him 41,000 emails in 1,000 days.
All the way through, however, is the pervasive feeling of guilt and complicity; that he initiated it all and made the wrong decision at every point of contact. It’s fascinating, harrowing and a cry out to the police, for whom he had to listen to hours of her voicemails to find something they could actually prosecute over.
You should definitely go and see it. But once is probably enough.
NOTE: Baby Reindeer runs at the Bush Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush from 9th October – 9th November. Tickets cost £10+, and can be booked HERE.
Bush Theatre | 7 Uxbridge Road, W12 8LJ
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