“Why can't you be happy?”
“Why can't you make something of yourself?”

Such are the questions asked of Torsten, the central character in Happy Yet?, by his bewildered family: questions for which there are no answers. Torsten has an unspecified and undiagnosed mental health condition that sometimes makes him incapable of getting out of bed and sometimes transforms him into a glitteringly energetic compulsive liar. He's already been rejected by his parents as the runt of their litter, whose only problem is a failure to “discipline” himself. When the play takes place, he is approaching 40 – but pretending to one of his many girlfriends to be nearing 30 – and living with a brother, much to the dismay of his sister-in-law, who is generally required to clear up the mess that his spurts of whirling devilry leave behind.

“Nothing he does makes any sense.”
“I don't know what he's thinking.”

The playwright, Katie Berglof, is young (she's studying at Edinburgh University), but writes from experience: her programme note mentions an uncle, “misdiagnosed and misunderstood”, who lived with her family “until his death”. It's easy to read Nina, the young girl on stage throughout Happy Yet?, as a representation of Berglof herself. Nina is the only character for whom Torsten isn't a problem: they play chess together, he helps her with her Ibsen homework, she chats with him non-judgementally. Seeing the action through Nina's innocent eyes encourages the audience to be less judgemental, too, especially when events become far-fetched (for instance, when Torsten persuades a police officer on duty to join him in getting drunk). Ibsen and his Swedish contemporary Strindberg hover in the background throughout, Berglof reaching towards them in her attempt to transmute the personal into the state-of-a-nation.

“All you do is throw pills at problems.”
“You can talk about these things in New York – not in Sweden.”

Throughout the play, Berglof makes jagged comments about (the paucity of) mental health provision in Sweden; she includes one character who works as a mental health professional, and makes her grimly unsympathetic. In Finland, alternative treatments for psychosis under the rubric Open Dialogue avoid medication and instead include family and friends in a circle of care, absorbing neurodiverse mental health into the community. By such measures, Torsten could be receiving the best care possible – except that, since the family themselves lack support, it's insufficient.

- Maddy Costa

Happy Yet? is on at 11.50 at Surgeon's Hall until August 27th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/happy-yet

Swedish mental health provision under attack: http://www.thelocal.se/20150818/swedish-mental-health-care-blasted-after-stabbing

Sweden's place in the global happiness index: https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/may/14/mental-illness-happiest-country-denmark

On compulsive lying disorder: http://www.compulsivelyingdisorder.com/what-is-compulsive-lying-disorder/

On bipolar disorder: https://www.rethink.org/diagnosis-treatment/conditions/bipolar-disorder

On Open Dialogue in Finland: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/02/12/open-dialogue-care-model-put-mental-health-social-work-back-map/

and: http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/mental-health-alternatives/finland-open-dialogue

Open Dialogue in London: http://opendialogueapproach.co.uk/

Madlove, artist the Vacuum Cleaner's new approach to asylum: http://madlove.org.uk/

Before he gets going, Scott Agnew checks that everyone in the room knows what he really means when he talks about snapping a banjo string. Because anyone who thinks they're in for an hour of innocuous anecdotes from a homespun folk player might be in for a shock. The incident during which – to use the medical term – the frenulum beneath the foreskin of his penis tore and “showered the walls with blood” is one of the more viscous but by no means most explicit of stories in this brief survey of the activities that might have led to him contracting HIV. Cantering from sauna to nightclub to drug-fuelled house parties, he admits that sometimes he wasn't in total control of his actions.

Long before his HIV diagnosis, Agnew needed another for his mental health, but the GP he saw wrote him off successively as an alcoholic, a food addict, a gambler, a sex addict and more, without recognising the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Agnew now manages both conditions, but there's an equivocal tone in his text that suggests he's still overwhelmed by this. For instance, he makes a specific point of saying that not understanding his mental health doesn't absolve his responsibility for his virus, as though HIV is a shameful thing. The words that repeat as a refrain in his show are: “It's not ideal – a downbeat phrase in search of a bright side.

Yet he does recognise positive aspects to his HIV diagnosis: for instance, he jokes, his medication has raised his life expectancy above the average for Glasgow, his home. And with the virus now undetectable in his blood count, he's a safer date than most – although, he points out lugubriously, “that's a hard sell on the dancefloor”. His politicking is bolder when directed outside himself: why is it, he asks, that gays on the telly have to be sexually neutered to be acceptable for a mainstream audience? Camp is fine, he argues, but there needs to be a wider spectrum of queer personality in public life. Elsewhere he gets exercised by the widespread use of date-rape drugs among gay men, who have been “hiding for so long” that they have no way of expressing their emotions. Undoubtedly the two are connected.

For all the comedic banter, it's a poignant show, one that raises a number of questions about Agnew's relationship with his diagnoses and with his Catholic family. Within those questions is a sharp impression of of how far the LGBT+ community still needs to travel towards visibility and feeling accepted within society at large. (MC)

Scott Agnew: I've Snapped My Banjo String, Let's Just Talk is at 22.00 at Gilded Balloon at the Counting House until 29 August. See venue for accessibility information - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/scott-agnew-i-ve-snapped-my-banjo-string-let-s-just-talk

On living with frenulum breve: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/feb/28/healthandwellbeing.health2

On HIV stigma and homophobia: http://www.thebody.com/content/art54913.html

A look at the language of HIV stigma: http://www.thebody.com/content/75496/when-words-work-against-us-the-language-of-hiv-sti.html

Information on bipolar disorder: http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/bipolar-disorder/