This one-woman show is a stellar debut by Rebecca Gholson at Denver Fringe

Dating is hard enough as it is, but when you’re conventionally unattractive and have a mental illness, it can feel like navigating a minefield. That’s the terrain explored by Rebecca Gholson’s one-woman show, Fat & Horny (And Incredibly Anxious).

This solo performance is part of the sixth annual Denver Fringe Festival at the downtown venue RISE Comedy. Rebecca is no stranger to RISE Comedy. She does shows over there pretty regularly and considers RISE to be her “comedy home.”

And she’s no stranger to the Fringe Festival either. She directed Frankie Lee’s FOMO, Formerly Mormon, which participated in the 2023 Fringe Festival at RISE Comedy, so this is a very comfortable playing space for Rebecca and her collaborators.

Director Valerie Vasilas has staged the piece well on RISE’s intimate stage. There are three distinct playing areas. Stage left has a bed, center stage is a toilet and stage right is a desk. These locations are expertly contorted into representing Rebecca Gholson’s decades-long journey through life and love.

The show opens with Gholson sitting center stage on the toilet wearing a shirt that has a bright yellow smiley face on it and bright red yoga pants. She’s in the bathroom because she’s just had an incredibly awkward experience in which she had a panic attack during sex and now is trying to process that.

This leads into a monologue in which Rebecca speaks directly to the audience, indicating right away that this is not a show with a fourth wall. Fat & Horny (And Incredibly Anxious) is a confessional piece in which Rebecca tells her story directly to you.

In that opening monologue, Rebecca says that as a single woman in her mid-thirties, all she wants to do is get laid. She then talks about all the various ways that she’d like to have sex before establishing the central tension of the play between Rebecca and Prudence, who is the voice in her head — the manifestation of anxiety in her life, who is filling her with all of these doubts that she’s had since she was a kid.

The show then jumps back in time to take us on Rebecca’s sex odyssey in order to help us understand who she is and how she got to where she is today. These stories, as well as Rebecca’s conversations with Prudence, are done via voiceovers that have been pre-recorded by a group of other actors, as well as Rebecca herself, who, in addition to playing Rebecca, is also voicing Prudence, that voice inside her head.

College years

That voice-over device is used to guide us through Rebecca’s life, allowing her to converse with herself as well as key people from her dating history.

We start back in 2010 when Rebecca was a student in Abilene, Texas, at a Baptist college, when she had her first sexual encounter with a man who didn’t actually think she was pretty, but was just using her to experiment. That language and feeling of not being wanted stick with her and have a massive impact on her self-esteem.

Rebecca then takes us into 2013, in which she’s with another guy who is not really into her, only wanting to have casual sex — he keeps constantly trying to make sure she’s not catching feelings. Then when this dude grabs another girl’s ass in front of Rebecca. When she confronts him, he just goes on the defense and is like, “You have no right to be mad. We were never together.”

That experience also stays with her, particularly as Rebecca then experiences a nine-year sex drought before rebounding with two very different guys. The one we started the show with, with whom she had a panic attack while they were having sex, and one whom she only refers to as “Torso” because of his dating app pictures.

Overall, the show’s script is incredibly intimate and very raw. It’s constantly oscillating between massive belly laughs that Rebecca is scoring because of her precise comic timing and thoughtful moments in which you see Rebecca baring her soul.

The piece is really smart in that it doesn’t sand down Rebecca’s flaws either. It admits that she can get overly excited at times and can’t read the signs correctly, but I believe that honest vulnerability is critical to what makes this show work so well.

Rushed ending

The only element of the piece that I wasn’t quite sure about was the rushed conclusion in which Rebecca and Prudence make up — this exchange that Rebecca does in which she confronts her anxiety head-on and accepts it for what it is.

This conversation comes at the very end of the show and just feels a little bit rushed. It also takes a slightly more cliché approach to mental illness, implying that it is something that can be overcome, which feels a little too sentimental in a way that the rest of the show does not.

Despite its somewhat contrived conclusion, Fat & Horny (And Incredibly Anxious) is a strong debut from Rebecca Gholson and her team in the solo space. The show is incredibly funny, a little bit cringy at times when you see some of the situations that Rebecca’s character finds herself in, but ultimately incredibly heartwarming and very life-affirming.

I won’t say this show is the cure to all your problems — definitely don’t ditch that Lexapro, anyone — but it’s certainly a start at creating a more understanding and compassionate world.