Company: Rob Gee, Leicester, U.K.

Genre: Play — Comedy

Venue: 21 — MTYP Mainstage

Leave it Fringe vet Rob Gee to craft a moving, funny and engrossing story about a guy who thinks he's Ramses II.

This is the third instalment in what the former psychiatric nurse says is his trilogy of solo shows about mental illness. Here we follow Simon, a bipolar patient in a mental hospital who suffers delusions of grandeur ("which means I've pissed them off because I'm better than they are," he says). When Simon makes a break for it, a series of other characters are drawn into his unique world.

It would be easy enough to play Simon for laughs, and there are plenty ("half the patients think they're Jesus, the doctors think they're God," Simon says).

But there's a deeper point to be made about the desperate tragedy of mental illness, and how we treat those who suffer from it.

My only quibble is that I'd like to see Gee's characters played a little more distinctly. But his performance is, as usual, energetic and likeable.

Icarus, in the end, soars.

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