Sheonah Allen begins his monologue memoir in a cod-Latino accent. The voice he’s chosen to mimic is the owner of a store called Masks y Mas (“Masks and more”), a shop in Allen’s native Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also tries on British accents, from which it may be safe to assume that his store owner impression is not particularly close. But the store owner’s voice is, perhaps, the most appropriate – they are all masks Allen adopts to avoid facing his past.
The vocal impressions are dropped fairly quickly in this hour-long trip through some of Allen’s family secrets. Bloodlust Summertime is, the comedian explains, a quest to locate – and, by implication, address and even eradicate – the “unnamed dread” that hangs over him.
And so we start to explore Allen’s young life, living in a school of which his father was principal until a troubled fellow teacher decided he was Satan, after which his hippie parents moved into a more remote location and started what sounds like a commune. Run-ins with the law seem common for the young Allen, as is the whole family’s use of LSD, a commodity his parents would buy in bulk.
Bloodlust Summertime is structured as a series of vignettes, between which Allen plays in recordings he has made, either of the family members he’s talking about or background sounds that evoke a sense of place. The use of such clips allows for segues that, instead of attempting to construct a smooth transition from story to story, acknowledge the seams and make them a feature.
But that also means that some sequences stutter and Allen tails off; the snap to a piece of audio can feel like a cover for an incomplete, or even failing, bit that Allen is keen to move on from. That may not be the intention, but the effect allows the piece to stutter in ways that detract from the power of some of the comedian’s tales.
Other moments are more effective. Particularly chilling is the tale of having a gun pointed at him, and how the sensation mirrors the unnerving qualities of direct and prolonged eye contact. That’s a small moment in a larger story, but it’s an indication of the evocative power in Allen’s storytelling when it really takes flight.
Moments like that don’t happen often enough. And while the tales Allen weaves include plenty of heavy material, there feels little need for a period of enforced levity when the comedian embarks on a series of bird-related puns. Bloodlust Summertime is at its best when Allen is content to sit in some of the more dangerous, chilling and occasionally disturbing stories of his childhood, finding the humour within the horrific.
Whether Allen really finds his unnamed dread is an open question. But this meandering journey through the remarkable, often LSD-fuelled events of his childhood is certainly a trip.
Runs until 21 February 2026
