Scout Boxall is getting dressed. Throughout their debut hour, Boxall is slowly, meticulously, donning a faithfully recreated 14th Century nun’s habit.
Faithful recreation is, after all, central to Boxall’s favourite pastime: live action role playing (LARPing). They’re here to tell us about the worst night of their life, “a night so harrowing I was sent back in time” – when, away for a LARP wedding, they spent their first night in years without Seroquel, the medication for bipolar disorder.
Interwoven with that main thread are tales of Jeanne d’Arc, benedictine polymath Hildegard von Bingen, and Boxall’s path to Seroquel in the first place, via a period of manic teenage productivity.
If that all sounds a bit high-minded, Boxall is unapologetic about their ambition, going as far as reading out their academic CV not once but twice. But it’s when interrogating that ambition and Seroquel’s impact on it that Boxall is at their most impassioned and interesting: “I was made to be the voice of a generation”.
Written and polished to within an inch of its life, God’s Favourite lands as theatre just as much as stand-up. If those theatrical ambitions aren’t quite met by its closing chapter, the show remains an engaging confessional, and a funny one at that.
Scout Boxall: God’s Favourite, Assembly George Square, until 30 Aug (not 18)