Review: BATSHIT

With a typically taboo-baiting Edinburgh Fringe title, Leah Shelton's one-woman show, directed by Ursula Martinez, could have been a clichéd romp through performance art tropes. But it's surprisingly thoughtful and tender, both as a study in the patriarchal pathologisation of women in crisis, and a disarmingly beautiful tribute to Shelton's grandmother Gwen, who was (potentially mis)diagnosed in middle age with schizophrenia.

Dressed in a frothy cocktail dress like a Lynchian chanteuse under a sickly green light, Shelton serenades with the Judy Garland standard, 'Get Happy', albeit with a hospital gag, muffling her beautiful voice. She takes us from real life hospital reports of Gwen, to the exploration of Freudian hysteria, to vox pops discussing gendered claims of hysteria. And it comes on like performance art, but lands in the liminal space between scripted theatre and intelligent cabaret.

Shelton's versatile presence is what elevates the show beyond conventional female empowerment shows. She is sex siren, benign nurse in white coat with a creepy reassurance that borders on Stepford grin, and best of all, her own vulnerable self, calling out the heroic women who have been dismissed as crazy – from Amy Winehouse to Julia Gillard – in a whirlwind of  righteous feminist power.