F*ck Off And Leave Me Alone at Bush Theatre

From across a sea of life, middle-aged Juliet shouts at an emo teenage Juliet. She misses her and wonders if they can hang out. Can they?

The response: F*ck Off and Leave Me Alone, the debut stand-up hour from writer, actor and comic Juliet Cowan (Everything I know about Love, BBC; Back to Life, BBC and Am I Being Unreasonable? BBC) who has unfinished business after beating Jimmy Carr, Russell Howard and Andy Zaltzman in the 1999 final of So You Think You Are Funny.

A comedy career abruptly put on hold due to the impracticalities of being on the road with two small children, F*ck Off and Leave Me Alone takes us full circle to two distinct periods in Juliet’s life, both strung out by hormones - her angsty teenage self, obsessed with gerbils, make-up and stealing meat off her mother’s plate - to present day mid-life. She explores this no-man’s-land where women are either assumed to ‘have a cunning plan or no idea what the f*ck they’re doing’ and never anything in between.

Book-ended at the cusp of both adult and geriatric life, Juliet takes us on a racy journey of celebrating the joy of being alive (at any age). We hear from her early years, plagued by the omnipresent threat of another nuclear war, to becoming a parent, leaving her marriage, going mad and running round like a Roman Emperor (also known as the menopause…).

The show, directed and produced by Lucille Findlay for Scillonia 435, follows a sell-out work in progress at the Canal Cafe Theatre earlier this year, during the Roe V. Wade announcement. Juliet explores how everything from confrontations in the park to the dying wishes of her grandmother have been impacted by the male patriarchal gaze. A stomping rally cry through the painful realities of being a woman in 2022, you may want to leave your oestrogen goggles at the door.