Marjolein Robertson on comedy from real-life experience: ‘Some of those stories almost broke me’
Marjolein Robertson has taken a long road to recognition and respect in the stand-up game but the rewards are now arriving at a rapid rate. Firing the starting pistol on our comedy special, Claire Sawers speaks to this storytelling Shetlander, an abuse survivor whose work is informed by folktales, language and therapy
I learned a new word from Marjolein Robertson’s stand-up. In fact, the Shetland comedian often teaches her audiences plenty of fascinating things: about wiccan curses, astral projection, moon phases, rare illnesses or how to shift sheep from one field to another, for example. In her sold-out Fringe show Marj, part one in a trilogy, with O and Lein following thereafter, she tells a story involving the word ‘shoormal’. A gorgeous bit of Shetland dialect, it means a sacred place, such as the part of the beach where the waves lap; neither land nor sea. It’s more than just the wrack line, where seaweed and driftwood often gather at high tide; it’s a transient spot, a shifting boundary. Similarly, Robertson’s work exists in the liminal space between storytelling and stand-up, ebbing and flowing freely from oddball whimsy to emotion-plumbing depths. A curious, magnetic hybrid of the esoteric, the spiritual and the mundane, Robertson is both down to earth and wired to the moon.
In broad brushstrokes, Marj is a show about the mind, O the body and Lein the soul, and Robertson will perform parts two and three of the trilogy over consecutive evenings as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival. Like a mermaid luring in sailors, Robertson draws her audience into Marj with bubbly, strange tales of studying seamanship at school, playing fiddle and taking acid, before dropping the stage lights and sliding into Scots folklore about selkies. Robertson weaves and slithers around a tale of shapeshifting mythical creatures, while slowly unveiling that she was once in an emotionally abusive relationship.
‘I use folktale as a metaphor,’ she says over Zoom from her part-time home in London. Lerwick-born Robertson was a Leither until last year but now splits her time between Shetland and England. ‘Folktale carries the burden. I don’t have to talk about specific things. Folktales are a safe analogy. It was a wall that meant I only had to deal with it onstage. Bits of Marj were written with help from a therapist.’
Her gradual reveal, like the metaphorical frog in the saucepan of boiling water, surfaces as an unsettling twist, bobbing up among the chirpy quirks and pally jokes. Audiences loved her potion of punchlines and personal narrative, and in 2023 Marj became her breakthrough show at the Fringe. Beneath the fairytale flourishes, fabulously nerdy details and weird party girl shtick was a strong undertow of real emotions, paced to sneak up stealthily.
‘I remember one comment afterwards,’ she recalls, pausing to whisper with a knowing, impish twinkle in her eye, ‘which happened to be from a man... he said my show was “slow and unfunny and it got sad”. That’s because I had a responsibility to deal with something carefully. I also had a lot of abuse survivors reach out afterwards. The messages were incredible but sometimes overwhelming. Some of those stories almost broke me. One mam and her 19-year-old child came up and gave me hugs afterwards; she’d had a coercive partner and the show helped her child understand why she couldn’t leave them at the time.’
The positive feedback inspired Robertson to continue in this vein of wisdom-sharing with her audiences, still blending in ancient oral traditions and, of course, her unique, strange humour. ‘O is the story of my long battle with adenomyosis and I wanted to teach as many people as I could about the condition. I’m a comedian so ultimately there will be jokes in it. But it’s comedy and it’s my story. With Lein I’ve found a new path.’
That path happens to take Robertson on an impulsive self-discovery trip to Amsterdam (her mum is Dutch) where she finds unlikely help from a group of nuns and an improv troupe. In her real-life adventure, she gets fired from a restaurant and all her possessions are nicked when her flat gets burgled.
Of course, the trilogy contains other spellbinding tales; we hear of a benevolent creature called the sea ‘midder’ (Shetland dialect for mother) and learn about the dream weavers, one of Robertson’s ‘favourite stories in the whole world’, about a young girl who goes out to pick berries, gets lost and winds up interpreting dreams. ‘She finds her own path out of the mist. She finds something unexpected and I kind of wrote Lein as the story of how I got into comedy.’
Fans will be delighted to hear that Robertson’s own story arc has recently been bending in a very positive way: Lein closes with ‘What If’, a track written for her by her new partner, musician Jack Bowden from indie folk trio Tors. She recently posted a clip on her Instagram of the pair playing tunes inside a snow fort: her on fiddle, him on banjo. ‘Marj involved me getting sad onstage every day. I had to take a bit of time out after that Fringe. I had a lot of chats about finding your own peace. Sometimes that simply means not texting emotionally unavailable boys! My flatmate and I kept a scoreboard about spice boys. We’d drink tea and chat about finding contentment, being enough, not hiding from growth. Just as I was talking about letting go and trusting someone, by a weird coincidence Jack wrote that song for me about letting go.’
Although redemption and serenity often don’t make for good belly laughs onstage, have no fear: Robertson makes sure her shows (post-therapy and with added soul searching) remain very funny. She believes in ‘shelving the sad stuff until a time when you are ready to talk about it. I think only the vainest person thinks they can make everyone laugh. My shows have jokes but it’s not that kind of non-stop gag, gag, gag style you’d get from other comedians. For me, stand-up is an artform. I take incredible care over the details, from my hairstyles to the lighting and music. I drop in little easter eggs, play birdsong, write in poetry and symbolism. I’m wondering if I can start incorporating my music in there somehow too...’
And there you have it. A comedian equally likely to teach you about menstrual health, talk about seeing into other dimensions or break into a reel on the fiddle. To paraphrase the wonderful Garth Marenghi... Marjolein Robertson: comedian, dream weaver, visionary.
Marjolein Robertson: O, Òran Mór, Tuesday 17 March; Soho Theatre, London, Friday 17 April; Machynlleth Comedy Festival, Machynlleth, Saturday 2 May; Lein, Òran Mór, Wednesday 18 March; Marjolein Is On Holiday, Flying Duck, Saturday 21 March.