When I reviewed the debut season of Respite last year, it’s low key and slightly awkward presentation was part of its charm, and its point.  Eamonn Marra fully embodied “the survivor of his own self-defeating state of mind” and his very presence as the teller of his own story was testament to his heroic ability to take responsibility for his mental health issues, seek help when needed and frame his particular life experience in a way that made it a gift to his audience.

All that is still true in this new season at Bats Theatre’s Studio season, despite its being tighter as a script and more assured in its presentation. In fact that adds to the ‘happy outcome’ dimension.

Amid a stack of books (he has a hard-won degree in English Lit) he regales us with: his experience of seeing in the New Year of 2011, how he got his i-pod back from a gang of skinheads (he’s living in Christchurch by the way), his determination to do well at university and the subsequent impact of the Feb 22 earthquake, the immediate-aftermath story of his just-cooked eggs, his commitment to ethical living including the great banana dilemma, his experience of iniquitous employment conditions, his four days in a Respite Care facility and the people he got to know in there, his third reading of Catcher In The Rye and the evolution of his judgements about Holden Caulfied …

A through-line is provided by his quest to be a better person – he dropped Logic and took up Literature because reading fiction teaches you empathy – and the flipside is his susceptibility to very low self-esteem.

What with and this reprise of Respite, his recent one-off contribution to Terrible Ideas (where he set out to prove everyone present was superior to him and therefore not his target audience) and Man on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in last year’s Comedy fest (about anxiety and depression), it is tempting to brand his particular niche genre: ‘comedy of the self-involved’.

But Marra makes us laugh, not at him, not through schadenfreude, but because we identify with his feelings (who among us has never suffered from low self-esteem?) and we are relieved at his ability to put it in perspective and take control. The epiphany that allows him to see reality for what it is comes from his encounter with a plastic pipe in his two-tone bedroom – and your will have to see this show to understand why.  

Students of psychology, philosophy, theology and ontology (that is us ordinary everyday students of life) cannot help but be drawn into Eamonn Marra’s Respite. It’s funny because it’s true and – maybe because he takes us to unfamiliar yet strangely familiar places – it engenders empathy, as much for ourselves as each other.

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