A Small Enclosed Room with Alfie Murphy

A Small Enclosed Room with Alfie Murphy comes to Mayflower Studios on Thursday 8 October, with the curtain going up at 7:45pm. It's a joyful dark comedy created and performed by Cian Binchy and Anna Constable, two acclaimed autistic artists who build the show around autism and mental health, using humour, imagination and a direct connection with the audience.

At the centre is Alfie, who spends the show shifting between different versions of himself — rockstar, guru, actor, shark. The imagery that follows is just as varied: shark chases, cardboard cut-outs and a rap about Devon. It's the kind of thing that sounds like it belongs in a child's bedroom or a fever dream, and that's where the comedy sits, in the gap between the absurd and the personal.

Behind the scenes, the piece was devised by Cian Binchy, with co-writers Shaun Dunne and Leah Moore and direction by Nick Llewellyn. Binchy and Constable are both on stage, so they're the ones bringing it to life in the room. The whole thing is designed to be inclusive: every performance is relaxed and captioned, so it's accessible for all audiences.

You'll find it in Studio 2 at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton, starting at 7:45pm on Thursday 8 October.