The writers of Waiting for Ikea return for this year’s Fringe with I’m Not ADHD... I’m BOLD; a comic
performance that holds a mirror up to society’s obsession with slapping a label on everything. School
teacher Dana (Jacinta Sheerin) begrudgingly attends a therapy session with dramatherapist Ingrid
(Clare Barrett) after she assaults a lactose-intolerant, ADHD-suffering 'devil-child' with a milk carton
and verbal cannon of rhyming insults. We soon learn that not only is Dana’s outburst owing to a
severe case of ADD, but that her therapist isn’t short of a few abbreviations herself - nothing that
she can’t sort out with a bottle of wine and a bit of road rage though.

Right from the beginning Dana and Ingrid are irritating – way too irritating to be likable – but that’s
sort of the point. At varying points throughout the hour-long performance, there are titters of
acknowledgement from members of the audience when they inevitably recognise some trait of
their own in one or other of this neurotic duo. Stuck in a room full of ADD, ADHD, OCD and sinister-
looking puppets, the audience is dragged into the characters’ vortex of dysfunction and made to feel
right at home.

To interpret I’m Not ADHD… I’m BOLD as an authoritative reflection of the myriad of learning
disabilities and psychological disorders that exist would be to take it too seriously. But when viewed
as a comedic commentary on the fact that everybody these days seems to have ‘something wrong
with them’, the manic humour of writers Georgina McKevitt and Jacinta Sheerin shines through.

Star rating: ★★★