After two hugely successful runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a world tour, critically acclaimed actor and comedian Beth Vyse is bringing her hilarious and poignant show As Funny as Cancer to Sale’s Waterside Arts Centre this week.
So many of Beth’s audience members have a story to tell Beth after the show, including the woman who had come directly from her Doctor, having just been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“A lot of people will get different things from it,” she says. “When I was doing the show recently in Edinburgh, a woman came to me afterwards who had been diagnosed a week before, and said she just wanted to see something that was talking about cancer in a positive way and laughing at it. Some people have big emotional cries in it and that’s more about them than me. And that’s what I’d prefer, that it shouldn’t all be about me.”
Diagnosed at the age of 28, Beth was given the five-year all-clear in 2014. Having kept her illness a secret from all but her closest family and friends, she wondered whether the moment was right to create a piece about her experiences which were a mixture of terrifying and, to use her own word, “hysterical”. A somewhat negative reaction from her agent at the time made her think again, but she knew there was a funny story to be told within the darkness. One of Beth’s early concerns was on how exactly to perform it.
“I first did a half-hour preview of it in February 2015 where I sat on a stool. Normally I’m bombastic and doing weird things but I was there just sitting on my hands because I thought my whole body would shake. I told my story and I knew it was good but I had to go away and work on what would make it funny. So the next time I told it I used props, and the time after that I got the audience involved. I was effectively working on the show in front of a live audience the whole time in order to work out both what this thing was and also to work out what I could and couldn’t make an audience do. You don’t know how much people will want to be involved in this kind of story; you don’t know who’s been through it and how hard it is for them.”
Once she discovered exactly how to put the show together, she worked on the roles that could be given to audience members, the main parts being the doctor who informed her of the diagnosis, and her partner during that difficult period. He just so happened to be called Michael Jackson which gives Beth plenty comedic scope to play with that coincidence. Her parents also make an appearance on screens behind her, their personalities coming alive as Beth fleshes out their own stories.
“They’ve both seen the show on a few occasions and they end up in tears every time. They sit at the back, in a corner, but they’re getting better with it now. They quite like being famous. I wouldn’t draw attention to them being in, but if a lot of the audience notice them there, then I might mention it. But again that would then make it about them and the audience might not get what they should be getting from the show, so I always try to avoid it.”
Time again she is told how important it is for fellow sufferers and survivors as well as friends and family of those affected, to be able to laugh about what is happening to them. So, say hello to Beth’s breasts – big,bold and on the road. Beth has talked about her story and her show on ITV’s Loose Women, BBC Radio 4’s Midweek’s at the Edinburgh Fringe BBC’s New Best Thing.
Funny As Cancer is a bodacious and ballsy look at her battle with breast cancer. We get to hear the tale of her Stoke-on-Trent family – The Waltons on Alcohol, her time with Nelson Mandela, acting and thieving at the Royal Shakespeare Company, settling down with Michael Jackson and finding cancer. Not to mention her producing two football teams from her womb. And all before the age of 30!
Beth Vyse is a critically acclaimed actor, writer, performer and also director from Stoke-On-Trent. After treading the boards across the globe for two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company, working at numerous national theatres, on TV show such as Spooks, A Touch Of Frost, Holby City and radio, Beth’s career suddenly had to stop, aged 28, when she discovered she had breast cancer. It was then she decided to move into comedy, an area she’d always wanted to work in. She created a surreal, sublime and completely ridiculous take on the world, underpinned with a brilliant and unique acting style.
Having performed with others at the Edinburgh Fringe for a number of years, Beth decided to go it alone in 2012 and hasn’t looked back. Her shows Going Dark! and Get Up With Hands are now reaching cult status. She is also the “queen pin” of Weirdos Comedy Club “the closet thing to a modern day comic strip we have” Chortle. You can catch her on the circuit at The Soho Theatre, The Pleasance, The Invisible Dot, Sabotage, Knock 2 Bag, ACMS and as part of the Weirdos alongside Fosters Award Winner, John Kearns and Pat Cahill.
Thursday 6th Oct Sale Waterside Arts Tickets
