Following on from last year’s hit show Why Am I Like This?, Nicole Nadler (a deeply endearing performer) returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with her new storytelling show about her ADHD, Why Am I (Still) Like This?
Nadler celebrates her diagnosis as the catalyst for stopping hating herself – but was that the ending? In this new 45 show, she is still that same manic performer, if anything dialled up a notch further, and now explores why no one hated the original show, or her, or told her she shouldn’t be telling her story.
Exploring the hollowness of hearing praise and how to respond to it as a neurodiverse artist, Nadler faces her own reality and tries to accept that Why Am I Like This? may have, in fact, been a good show, and her inner voice has to stop raining on her parade.
So, that’s the premise of Why Am I (Still) Like This? A raw, sweary, and searingly honest solo show about dealing with the way individual brains play with how we view ourselves, and how ADHD brains in particular kick you down if you let them, and how having a disorder or disability means your life as a “disaster” is not funny any more.
Nadler’s style is both amusing and reflective, balancing quickfire humour with longer periods of reflection. Outer voices taunt “stupid”, “loser”, “freak”, “cry baby”. The kind of voices that might wrap a neurodiverse child in a swathe of suffocation their sensitive minds can’t cope with. The voices that end relationships when an adult with ADHD just scrambles to hang on.
This is a deeply touching show that will resonate with many people personally, either because they recognise themselves in Nadler’s experience, or have met or worked with, or loved, people like her. People who are frightened of themselves and loathe what they are, and feel the whole world sees them in the same way.
Do you need to have seen the first show before watching this one? I did, so am aware of the backstory of Nadler’s self diagnosis and have an appreciation of her performing style, but I don’t think it is necessary. You just need to know this is a follow-up to that successful piece of theatre. It certainly stands on its own, and in this beautifully-filmed digital version, is just as strong as Why Am I Like This?
*****