Camden Fringe 2026: An Unholy Alchemy – Etcetera Theatre, London

Writer and Director: Roopak K Khara

It’s an unusual gambit to admit that your one-night show has, apart from its listing on the theatre’s website and that of the Camden Fringe Festival, deliberately not put out any marketing or promotional material at all. That means, writer/performer Roopak K Khara suggests, that those in attendance must have really wanted to be here. Unfortunately, it also means that the audience is very small indeed. Which is a problem for a show that is structured to rely heavily on audience interaction.

The topic of Khara’s An Unholy Alchemy, billed as an hour-long piece, is a guide through the labyrinthine world of the Mental Health Act. A trained psychiatrist herself, she is often called upon to assess people who may need to be sectioned in an emergency. But reaching a diagnosis for someone with whom she has no prior history can be tricky, especially given some of the particular diagnosable mental disorders covered by the Act.

Khara introduces the topic by taking a phone call requesting an assessment of someone who’s claiming to be God. Some of the details imply a stand-up comedy approach to the topic (God, apparently, was taking a personal day when Donald Trump was conceived, and the regret is making Him suicidal), but it soon becomes apparent that Khara wants to be more respectful of the patients, their various mental health crises, and the profession.

Rather than risk the process becoming a lecture, Khara instead relies on props and the dreaded audience participation. Picking topics from a wheel (which, when nobody in the audience volunteers, she has to spin herself) may not be the best way to move proceedings along, because it necessarily becomes a stop-start sequence of disparate elements.

Khara then moves on to stand by a Twister mat, the significance of which never really becomes clear as she describes a set of symptoms and invites the audience to discuss whether it would qualify as a diagnosable mental disorder under the Act. It’s a sequence that Khara herself undermines by admitting that they all are, except for the one whose physiological and neurological symptoms appear to be the most extreme – which she then admits is a description of falling in love. As a punchline it’s really rather sweet, although immediately diminished by reverting to a couple more descriptions of syndromes.

Throughout the piece, Khara apparently takes phone calls from “God”, her patient. These have the potential to illuminate what it is like to try and communicate with someone who is in acute mental health crisis and shine a light on the important and difficult work psychiatrists like Khara do. But writing phone calls in which one party cannot be heard is tricky at the best of times, and while Khara clearly tries to stay away from repeating everything in a way that would sound fake, the alternative is that she remains silent for stretches — which does not make for a watch that is either entertaining or informative.

After one such call, Khara leaves the auditorium, only half an hour into the show’s billed running time. One feels that she may have called it quits with this – her first attempt to bring her work to the stage – not working the way she had hoped. Props which, perhaps, would have been utilised in the remainder of the piece remain untouched. 

And in its current form, one can empathise with Khara’s decision. There is the germ of something that could be intriguing, informative, and enlightening about the Mental Health Act while also providing entertaining theatre, without patronising or belittling the vulnerable people at its heart.

Mixing comedy with serious real-life situations must surely be doable. For example, Alfie Moore’s Radio 4 series It’s a Fair Cop, in which the former policeman walks his audience through a series of policing decisions in a light-hearted manner, is a great template. Perhaps with a stronger narrative structure, some dramaturgy to help Khara shape her piece, and a little more focused audience interaction, her goal could be achieved.

For, as Khara says, psychiatrists are often assumed to be arbiters of social justice, so it is important that their true role is better understood. While An Unholy Alchemy does not work in its current form, its commendable intent still shines through.

Reviewed on 3 August 2026

Camden Fringe runs until 30 August 2026