Review: THE LONG RUN, VAULT Festival

It turns out it's totally possible to violently sob at a comedy if Katie Arnstein writes it. The Long Run is a comedy about cancer. Why did she write it? Because "[she] can-cer". Around this time a year ago, Jane Arnstein, Katie's mum, was diagnosed with bowel cancer. It was sudden, it was surprising, it was unfair. Her daughter left her job in London to go back to the East Midlands to help her parents through it, driving her to radiotherapy appointments and putting on a brave face.

Through observational comedy, pop culture jokes, and a knack for a cracking one-liner, Arnstein makes light of the matter with the necessary gravitas that such a horrendous diagnosis deserves. It seems an impossible juxtaposition, but she aces it. Unafraid to self-deprecate to lift her mum up to hero status, the writer and performer compares driving Jane to the hospital to her school drop-off days in a bleak comparison.

She describes the variety of people waiting for "their person" outside the treatment room vividly, almost conjuring them up on stage with her - until one of them actually appears. George, an old man in squeaky trainers who runs up and down the corridor vexing her with the constant movement becomes her unlikely friend. The piece twists on its head in the middle and goes from black comedy to life-affirming in memoriam. It's a tearjerker in the funniest, saddest way. The precipitous change of focus might tamper with the pace, but it's crucial to the project's outcome.

Directed by VAULT Festival's Head of Programming Bec Martin in her directorial debut, the play is dark in humour but not in atmosphere. The direct address establishes an immediate personal rapport and, by the end of it, you'll wish you had a Katie Arnstein in your life. Effortless and sardonic, she smiles through the pain of seeing her mother depleted and deflated after each session in a heartbreaking, realistic representation of the experience of many.

From the bowel cancer coffee mornings where coffee is served unreservedly to George and Reg's love story, it's an emotional journey. But, as Arnstein says at the start, it ends well. Whether you've experienced cancer only "theoretically" like Arnstein did or you unfortunately have a more hands-on background, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll feel. The Long Run is a good one.

The Long Run is at VAULT Festival until 5 March.

VAULT Festival has been left without a venue for next year. You can contribute to the #SaveVAULT campaign here.

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