“Fix My Brain is a narrative comedy in which Dillon Mapletoft tries to break out of an episode of depression with the help of his medical-student roommate Oliver Taylor, using methods that include dieting, exercising, and accidentally falling in love with a cartoon avatar on a motivational website.”

This is the overview that Dillon gives me of Fix My Brain, their upcoming comedy show. It’s concept-heavy, to say the least — with the emphasis on ‘heavy’. Mental illness, though it has cropped up in Cambridge student comedy shows before (memorably in Yaseen Kader’s Smile in 2014), has perhaps never been handled so directly. It begs the question — is depression funny?

“I definitely think that the best comedy comes from a place of honesty and would really champion it as a medium of self-expression.” So, perhaps not in and of itself, but comedy does often manage to give voice to things we otherwise wouldn’t discuss. It’s cathartic - laughing with others in a dark room, we feel that we might not be so alone after all. “Just being able to put these things in front of a crowd is a great thing … when an audience really reacts to something, you know it’s an experience they’ve shared.”

All this is not to say that it’s going to be preachy or inaccessible. As Dillon tells me, Fix My Brain is, first and foremost, entertainment. “We definitely wouldn’t attach any kind of ‘message’ to it and have aimed to make it clear that we’re coming from purely personal experience.” And so, though it would be nice if it contributed ‘in some small way’ to encouraging more open dialogues about mental health, they’re aiming to make people laugh, not cry.

“We’ve really aimed to be ambitious by producing a show that we hope is inventive, funny and also very personal”

Oliver and Dillon need no introduction. You’ll have seen them at Smokers and in shows across Cambridge. Both have been Footlights President — Dillon this year, Oliver the year before. They’re on the Footlights Wikipedia page! With Robert Webb! And Eric Idle! Despite my teasing, they quickly brush off the idea that they’re some kind of comedy super-duo.“I guess all we’d say is that whatever expectations there might be, we’ve really aimed to be ambitious by producing a show that we hope is inventive, funny and also very personal — within a genre that can often shy away from these issues.”

In fact, they say it’s not the comedy side of things that makes them so well-qualified. It’s real-life experience. Outside of Smokers and stand up, Oliver is about to become a doctor. And, well, as Dillon’s suffering with depression, he’s become the patient. The show came together quite naturally as a result of this dimension to their friendship. Perhaps working together as comedians is conducive to collaborating on other things as well. The title of the show is in-keeping with this theme of sharing, of getting by with a little help from your friends. “The name is about wanting help to overcome something you have no control over, that you don’t fully understand and feel guilty about because of that lack of understanding.”

There’s the charts and tables, the SSRIs, the CBT — but then there’s the indistinct, hazy side of things. The illogical can’t-get-out-of-bed emotion, which we don’t know how to talk about or address as an illness. But if science can often feel alienated from our daily experience of mental health, it can also explain what might be going on, in an absurd, but oddly reassuring way.

Review: Chameleon

“It turns out that our brains, which evolved in the Stone Age to find mates and hunt for food, are not particularly good at responding to emails, writing essays, or answering the existential conundrum.” I’m interested to see how the show works with what is, by their own admission, an “endlessly complex, challenging and contradictory disease.”

It’ll be a mix of sincere discussion and pure comedy, tackling a topic that, particularly in Easter Term, will resonate with Cambridge students. And if their previous shows are anything to go by, it’s going to be quite the evening out, too.

Fix My Brain runs from Thursday 4th - Saturday 6th May 2017, 9:30pm at the Corpus Playroom