Fringe review: Scout Boxall – God’s Favourite
Darkly funny and brilliantly delivered, Scout Boxhall’s wild night of medication withdrawal is masterclass in comedic writing. ★★★★½
Waiting for Scout Boxall is a strangely calming experience. As the audience take their seats surrounded by the Circulating Library’s towering shelves of vintage hardbacks, it becomes clear that the soothing voice in our ears is none other than 1980s artist Bob Ross, host of the Joy of Painting, gently encouraging us through the act of touching brush to canvas.
Once on stage, Scout swiftly intensifies the room’s energy, introducing themselves with a frank self-awareness that immediately has the audience on-side. In their Jeffrey Dahmer glasses and an AFL-worthy mullet, Boxall hands us a backstage pass to the experience of living with and managing bi-polar disorder — and what happens when accidentally stranded without medication.
After a quick and dirty introduction to the unspoken hierarchy of mental illness, Scout lays out the scenario. It’s a weekend in country Victoria where they are organising a friend’s nuptials. This is no ordinary wedding. It’s a LARP affair (live action role playing) which begins to explain why Scout is dressed in a nun-like tunic and under-shirt.
There’s a flurry of jokes that land hard with audience members experienced with rolling 20-sided dice and wearing elf-ears, but the underlying story of Scout’s involuntary cold-turkey from their medication soon reasserts itself and the ride through this intense experience this is the beating heart of the set.
This show is not only hilarious, it’s a masterclass in comedic story-telling. With perfect pace and razor-sharp self-awareness, Scout recounts the wild flow of tangential thoughts as they spiral into withdrawal, punctuating the narrative with expertly placed episodes of backstory that flesh out their journey from unmedicated mania to stability.
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Using voice recordings to bring us into conversations with wedding hosts, friends and their mother, alongside clever lighting that shifts locations, mood and time, Scout whisks the audience along on this hilarious and eye-opening descent into the worst night of their life.
As the set progresses, Scout adds to their mediaeval-era tunic, donning headwear and accessories to eventually morph into a likeness of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century nun, polymath, writer and visionary who quite possibly had a mental illness. It’s all part of Scout’s analysis of bipolar disorder — a condition that could see you burned at the stake in the fifteenth century, lobotomised in the 1950s or on stage at the Fringe in 2025.
God’s Favourite reveals Boxall as a triple threat — comedian, writer and performer — and last night’s show had them thinking on their feet as they dealt with audience members who’d over-indulged in cans of gin fizz. It was a Joan of Arc-worthy effort, keeping the brilliant narrative on track despite the breaks to flow and cadence. While the Circulating Library is a gorgeous venue, it’s quite intimate, and Boxall’s incredible talent deserves far larger crowds. Don’t miss it.
Scout Boxall – God’s Favourite is playing Circulating Library (at the State Library) The Courtyard of Curiosities at the Migration Museum until March 2
Read more 2025 Adelaide Fringe coverage here on InReview