The first time I met comedian Marjolein Robertson, an interview in which she was showing me the contents of her bag became completely derailed by a reusable menstrual pad. It had elicited an anecdote about the time Robertson first showed symptoms of adenomyosis, a condition where the womb’s lining starts growing into the muscle around the uterus wall, often resulting in extremely heavy periods. Three years later, in a literal full-circle moment, this very story forms the backbone of her 2024 Fringe show, O.
At 16, Robertson was preparing to sit Higher exams at her family home in Shetland when she experienced a period so heavy it nearly killed her. ‘I had just been bleeding and bleeding and bleeding for like ten days. I was changing my tampon and pad every hour, then every half an hour, then every 15 minutes. I was so weak, so tired and I was kind of struggling to breathe and my mum was like “this isn’t right”. So she drove me to the hospital that night, they took a blood test and were like, “oh she needs two blood transfusions”.’
Conflicting advice
Despite finding herself in a critical condition in hospital, the only treatment this episode warranted was for Robertson to be put on the contraceptive pill, a one-size-fits-all solution to pretty much any menstrual-related issue. ‘It was just to stop my periods from happening in the first place. But when I asked what happened, they wouldn’t look into it.’ It took 14 years for Robertson to finally get an interior scan, meet with a gynaecologist and get a diagnosis, and even now, treatments and coping strategies come down to trial and error.
Since deciding to tell her story on stage, Robertson continues to receive conflicting and uncertain advice from medical professionals: ‘Nurses and doctors and specialists who come to my show, they come with various degrees of knowledge about my condition. It is really interesting. It’s not an attack on the NHS, because I have so much love and respect for them. I think it’s a worldwide problem. I don’t think there’s enough knowledge.’
Body horror sensibilities
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Robertson has been contending with audience members fainting in previews, not just during one theatrical stunt that leans into body horror sensibilities, but at the mere mention of common women’s health procedures. ‘When the audience is lining up, we’ll be asking if they have an aversion to blood. And if anyone does, we’re just gonna get them to stand aside and slip them into the room after the first [stunt] bit is done. But then I did have someone faint when I explained the [contraceptive] implant. I was like, ‘there’s nothing I can do about that!’
This isn’t the first time Robertson has had to handle tricky subject matter with care on stage. Last year’s critically acclaimed show Marj, which earned her a flurry of five-star reviews, oscillated between the story of The Selkie’s Wife and an abusive relationship Robertson had personally experienced. ‘When I was writing those bits of the show I would run all my jokes past my therapist. Not for myself, but for the audience. The whole point was that if anyone got upset by the show, it would be slow and safe for them. And there would still be punchlines, but not at anyone’s expense.’
A Shetland folk tale
Following on from Marj, O is part two in a trilogy of Fringe shows Robertson plans to complete next year that will each weave in a Shetland folk tale. ‘I just think [folk tales] provide nice analogies. As a child, you see them as entertaining stories, but as an adult, it’s like, oh, there’s so much knowledge in there. We sometimes tend to simplify them in our minds, but people in the past were as emotionally complex as we are now.’
‘Sea Midder and Teran’, which will be told throughout O, is a battle between the sea mother and the spirit of winter that gives a narrative to the seasons. ‘It’s rooted in nature and the environment. It explains why it’s safe to fish in summer, why winter is about staying in and protecting yourself’ Robertson explains. Each of these seasons will relate to a stage of her own life, from childhood memories of crofting on her farm to her dream funeral. And of course, in between all of this hard-hitting storytelling, laughs will be plentiful.
‘It could be an hour full of jokes, and that’s a valid show,’ says Robertson, ‘but that’s the beauty of the Fringe: you’ve got an hour, so you can really explore something. You can change the mood, take the audience somewhere that’s a bit tougher and then take them back out again. And you’ve got the time and space to give hope, which I think is really important.’
O is at Monkey Barrel (The Hive 1), 20 July – 25 August (excluding 12)
Photo Credits: Trudy Stade
