Helen Bauer shares a stage today with her imaginary eight-year-old self; it’s part of some inner-child therapy she is doing. The 34-year-old comedian is also trying to find her compassionate voice and practice self-love but Bauer is struggling with that as she finds self-love a very ‘gauche’, cringey, American concept. For now, the voice from the Trusty Hogs podcast with Catherine Bohart is still shouty, and her schtick mostly bitter and unhinged. She jokes that she keeps wishing ill on her friends and accuses her crowd of being mentally ill, just like her. ‘I can smell the sertraline!’, she nods, gesturing at the audience.

There are confessional glimpses of growth amongst material about being the biggest, loudest personality in her friendship circle. She pokes fun at her constant need to be witnessed and describes her slow recovery from binge eating. After touching on the dysfunction in her own relationship with her mother, Bauer draws out the collective, concerned mother hen in the audience when she announces, slightly unnervingly, that she had surgery only a week earlier. A walking work-in-progress, it feels like she is still in the thick of her therapy ‘journey’ but more laughs might come once she’s had a chance to heal a bit more. 

Helen Bauer: Bless Her, Monkey Barrel, until 24 August, 3.20pm; main picture: Raphael Neal.