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.