Reviewed by Talia Carl­isle.

On a rain-splattered Wel­ling­ton even­ing, I find myself refuge in BATS Theatre’s Stu­dio space where paper “wor­ries” are hung on string across the small stage.

An eager smat­ter­ing of audi­ence mem­bers buzz in excite­ment, wait­ing for Ray Ship­ley to enter, fresh from a pop­u­lar Christ­ch­urch sea­son with a well-craf­ted set ready to wow us in Fifty Shades of Ray.

The micro­phone con­firms our excite­ment, and with a clev­er self-intro­duc­tion, our star and Billy T Nom­in­ee – Ray – appears as them­selves. How great is that! (Who did you think it would be… Ray O’Leary? O’Lordy not me).

Ray looks so com­fort­able on stage, it might as well be a bubble bath – although I’m not sure if bubbles would stress them out as Ray seems anxious about a lot of things…

They are also com­fort­ably cool among fel­low com­edy roy­alty at BATS Theatre this week – Kura For­res­t­er in the sold-out sea­son of Here If You Need, Kura Tur­uwhen­ua in Hōhā Guy, Janaye Henry’s Crush Sea­son, and Abby How­ells’ naut­ic­al romance La Soupco which offers an addi­tion­al relaxed per­form­ance on Sat­urday.

Talk­ing about anxi­ety may not be relax­ing, but it is lovely to hear such a pos­it­ive and encour­aging set that touches on a unique angle of anxi­ety in the mod­ern world.

From play­ground angst, to get­ting stran­ded on a Dis­ney­land ride, Ray reminds us we can’t all live in the hap­pi­est place on Earth all the time, but we can still find things to enjoy and to cel­eb­rate. Even our wor­ries.

We can also find ways to help man­age the anxi­ety of the mod­ern world – this is some­thing Ray has been learn­ing since child­hood, and it doesn’t seem adult­hood is much easi­er, so pay atten­tion!

I like the unique lay­ers hid­den in the show, from Ray’s nifty zine magazine left on every seat… to open­ing all the paper wor­ries at the end of the show and reveal­ing that these wor­ries are…about the show. And yet hil­ari­ous!

Ray reminds us that the truth has a heart, hap­pi­ness has its down­sides, and even in the hard­est situ­ations you can find some­thing to laugh about.

We don’t have to look too far for funny this New Zea­l­and Inter­na­tion­al Com­edy Fest­iv­al! For some­thing relat­able, sur­pris­ing and aww-indu­cing, check out Fifty Shades of Ray, at BATS Theatre until Sat­urday.