Single Use

Verity Mullan brings her one-woman comedy Single Use to the Alma Tavern Theatre in Clifton on Monday 12 October. It's a solo show that puts the climate crisis through a personal lens, focusing on climate guilt, emotional avoidance and the specific, small-scale anxiety of plastic recycling. Rather than a broad lecture on the state of the planet, it's a look at how those big, heavy themes sit inside an ordinary life.

On stage, Mullan plays Ella, a self-described karaoke-loving procrastinator. Much of the comedy comes from that gap between the world's problems and the way we actually spend our days—the guilt of a plastic bottle in the wrong bin, the tendency to put off the things that feel too big to handle, and the small distractions we use to keep the panic at bay. It's a one-woman show, so the whole thing rests on Mullan's performance as Ella, and the storytelling is built around her character's own voice.

If you've spent any time in Bristol, you know the city's particular relationship with recycling and sustainability, so the subject matter should land well here. It's a comedy, but it's one that doesn't shy away from the guilt and avoidance that come with living in a world that feels like it's fraying at the edges. The focus stays on the human side of it—the procrastination and the small, everyday contradictions—rather than the statistics.

Single Use runs at the Alma Tavern Theatre in Clifton on Monday 12 October. It's a one-woman show, so it's just Verity Mullan on stage as Ella, working through the guilt and the recycling one joke at a time.