Adam Cayton-Holland is a comedian who endured something terrible. Shortly after his previous appearance at the Just for Laughs festival, he found that his sister Lydia, his best friend, had committed suicide.
A couple of weeks later while he was destroyed by grief, he and his friends sold their first pilot. He went to therapy and wrote a book called Tragedy Plus Time to help him process his grief. His Off-JFL Zoofest show, Happy Place, is a one-man show based loosely on his memoir.
Happy Place is a show that will make you uncomfortable. In it, Cayton-Holland has a frank discussion about suicide, mental illness, and grief. He talks about his upbringing in Denver, Colorado, his parents, and the unusual ticks he and his siblings have, or in Lydia’s case, had.
He talks openly about crying, about the depression he’s been through, and the therapy he went through to help him cope. It is as much a tribute to his sister as it is a step towards destigmatizing mental illness.
Every once in a while the show will veer off-topic from his family and his grief and tell a story or a fake statistic or make a snarky remark that hints at the comedian he used to be before tragedy struck. Though I was often laughing during the show, I found myself sniffling more than once.
You don’t feel like an audience member when you see this show, you feel like a friend letting another friend pour their heart out on stage. If I had one criticism, it’s that he describes depression as making the sufferer not realize how foolish and selfish they’re being, something that could exacerbate the shame often felt by people that are struggling with it.
Happy Place is not a typical Just for Laughs show. If you want to see a comedian on stage telling you jokes, look elsewhere. If you want something with a little more substance, something that will make you laugh and cry, something that uses comedy to destigmatize something horrific, check out Happy Place. It’s worth it.
Just for Laughs continues until July 28, tickets available through hahaha.com
