Hospital Hour Review: Trauma-Comedy Hits New Heights

Whenever you think trauma-comedy has reached its peak, along comes a show that makes you both reel and laugh at the depths of another person’s despair. Enter Rachel Kaly, one half of the duo behind the hit Too Far podcast. Her show, Hospital Hour, itemizes the mental distresses that have led her to therapy since September 12, 2001 (when she was just six years old and schooled close to the twin towers) and to hospitalizations more than 300 times. It’s no wonder the New Yorker presents her fringe debut in a slightly stupefied monotone. If all this had happened to me, I’d be dazed too.

Is the ratio too high in Hospital Hour between the outlandish realities of Kaly’s ill health and actual jokes? Probably, but often the bare facts themselves, plus a little personal context, elicit laughter. The 28-year-old describes the emotionally bruising behavior of her Middle Eastern father, having her first period in sync with the execution of Saddam Hussein, or resorting to burrito smoothies when she lost the ability to swallow.

Comedy may be what has kept Kaly just about sane; she’s been performing since she was nine. One might wish for greater variation to her numbed delivery, but her brand of bleak black comedy is piercing. She details an unromantic loss of virginity, a sexuality partly dictated by her parents’ mutual acrimony, and therapists who either fall inappropriately in love with her or fall asleep during sessions.

Once the narrative reaches the present day, Kaly admits she doesn’t know quite what to do with it. An interactive closing stunt, where we co-compose an email to her delinquent dad, feels like a placeholder of a conclusion. The jokes about her psychological dependence on this show’s success don’t exactly lift the mood either. But Kaly has a remarkable tale to tell, made all the more remarkable by the fact that she tells it with a smile on her face.