Its all gone Tits up at the Corn Hall
Posted on 11th October 2026
The knowingly provocative title of Broke & Knackered’s latest production tips off the audience that while this is a heartfelt examination of the devastating effect of breast cancer, it’s also a testament to the stoic fortitude of the human spirit when everything goes Tits Up. In a ninety-minute show that zipped by, the audience shared time with four women waiting for delayed appointments in an oncology department. Alliances form, arguments break out, and backstories emerge. Written and performed by Alison Stanley and Leah Bell, the play offers a sharply humorous text that is funny, yet poignantly authentic.
This is essentially an ensemble performance, but the linchpin is Leah Bell’s Tina. Bell delivers her own words with a rare authenticity, injecting genuine laughs into a tragic situation. Tina is the model of self-sacrifice, worrying more about her son’s future than her own. Imagine Sarah Millican delivering homilies and you’ll get a sense of Bell’s brilliantly nuanced character study. Tits Up is a comedy of sorts, but only in the sense that good humour is always part of life, yet so often strangely absent in drama. Crissy Rock’s Brenda, fiercely independent and frustrated by her daughter’s overbearing mollycoddling, audaciously breaks the fourth wall to do stand-up. Rock is an established comedian, so the moment is a tad meta, the conceit being that Brenda does a turn at bingo. What might have been an awkward gear change actually works well, reminding us that breast cancer sufferers shouldn’t be defined by their illness.
Nor should they be defined by their jobs. Alison Stanley’s Rachel, a high-flying executive armed with a laptop and Gucci handbag, provides necessary contrast in a waiting room that might otherwise have become an echo chamber of defiant resilience. Rosie, a terrified eighteen-year-old sensitively played by Katie Potts, reminds us that not everyone can meet a life-changing crisis with humour and grace. The play makes clear that it’s okay to be worried about yourself, terrified even, and that there’s no shame in that.
It also reminds us that life obstinately carries on, oblivious to the gravitas of an individual’s situation, and that’s a message that reverberates beyond breast cancer. I counted three men, including myself, in an audience of over a hundred, which I thought was a shame. Breast cancer may not directly concern them, but its traumatic effects would. This uncompromising yet humane play deserves to be seen by the widest possible audience.