Rosie’s Brain continues at the Hope Theatre, London until 8 February 2025.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Evelyn Rose is a Californian who completed an MA in Musical Theatre at the Central School of Speech and Drama in 2023. Her gentle, low-key show does exactly what its title claims. It gives us insights into Rosie’s brain – which has “issues” –  in a 60-minute musical and spoken monologue. It feels pretty truthful and I can’t help wondering whether it’s, at least in part, autobiographical, but I have no insider knowledge of whether it is.

Rosie has compulsions as a toddler, insisting, for example on ducking under the bathwater but hating it. Always, according to her mother, an “eccentric”, she later can’t talk to boys because of excessive anxiety. She compulsively confesses to absurdly minor …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/rosies-brain-hope-theatre/