Gail Louw “ADHD? WTF is ADHD!” Playground Theatre, Kensington

And WTF is this? “Hi, I’m Blulu and I’m a total virgin. This is my first time doing anything like this. I hope you’ll be gentle with me and I hope I won’t get pregnant…. pauses.” Louise Combs’ stand-up alter-ego Blulu makes her debut and returns. you might hope more confidently, each time; punctuating Louise’s doubts throughout the show.

Moving across from the mic stage-right, sloughing off her blue-glittery jacket slung onto a hook with a few splashes of clothing, Wilkinson Wright’s Louise slumps into the central armchair. Or sits by her mirror and cosily cluttered dressing-table; with a peripitetic mug of perpetually-microwaved tea.

Comb, lifelong friends with Louw – Comb’s lecturer many years ago – was diagnosed late (aged 64) with ADHD.  It’s a condition recently recognised, often retrospectively applied. As Combs’ neighbour Sandra says dismissively: ”Even I’ve got it… it’s the new thing.” But unless you’re living with it, you won’t see how a few nervosities (in poet Hart Crane’s term) don’t constitute this paralysing condition. Though she has several books to her credit, Comb’s memoir is in effect a huge as-yet unpublished journal. Collaborating with Louw she offered the material that’s now crafted into a play. It’s Louw’s 21^st to be staged since she started late in 2008.

Over 75 minutes Blulu flits across for a few nervous laughs from the audience, inviting some participation. The laughs themselves though are nervous, as if we’re really not comfortable with laughing back. There’s canned laughter and indeed backscreen projected words, part of May Bucilliat’s work: she’s also set and tech designer, as well as stage manager. Hers is an enormous undertaking. Most of this works extremely well, bar the words that in their present form don’t quite convey the frisson of obsession needed. That will refine in (almost certain) revivals.

Wilkinson-Wright is sovereign in this work, as she slides from Blulu to a shudder behind her. Louise sloughs her jacket, considers the two who walked out, the nature of the laughter. Eventually event the canned laughter curdles in a few sonic tweaks, a masterstroke of Bucilliat’s. After a brief snatch of tonight’s pop-song, Wilkinson-Wright flinches over her shoulder with an increasing tic so finally even the audience hears the way that last laugh got to Comb.

There’s a gamut of feelings in-between. Comb’s partner Brian does his best to assuage, support and often mutely agree. There’s no room in this condition for anything but unequivocal support.

Early negatives from a father, a much-loved mother whom Comb has inadvertently blanked from her memory so much that her best friend recalls her better than Combs herself. A brother Russell who takes after his father to a preternatural degree; and a gambler Barry. There’s friends like Fundamentalist Pam, whom Comb has to unfriend after all the Jesus chat, and who’s clearly hurt. None of this, positive or negative, explains ADHD exactly, but it reinforces or intensifies the condition. Despite fragmentary laughter again.