[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts 2026 Hollywood Fringe Festival review of Therapist Zero, Brian Leonard’s deeply personal and hilarious solo show about one family’s decades-long search for answers to their daughter’s mental health struggles.
Brian Leonard is a face you will recognize. He has a long career in stand-up, film and TV, as well as being an award-winning filmmaker and a comedy writer. This rather wonderful solo show has had runs on Broadway as well as in the San Francisco Fringe. As his first foray into the Hollywood Fringe, Therapist Zero could not have arrived at a more opportune time for me; with as many shows as I have on my schedule, I need my head examined!
All joking aside, although this play is filled with them, Therapist Zero is an eloquent and beautifully balanced retelling of Brian and his family’s journey through what turns out to be 30 or so therapists and 20 years’ worth of psychologists in an attempt to understand and help their daughter. Brian’s daughter suffered from a young age from anger, emotional meltdowns, panic attacks, and many hard-to-explain and difficult-to-navigate episodes, filling their lives with collective stress and worry. Their search for the right kind of help took most of her childhood and had a deep impact on all their lives. A multitude of diagnoses, most of which involved various drugs and therapeutic techniques, put them through the wringer. Not to mention therapists that just gave up well into treatments and passed them on like orphans to others.
It was a horrible mess for a long time, and although now things have leveled out and she is in college and a happy, brilliant woman, it took its toll.
Mental health is hard enough to navigate for us grown ups. But for a child who probably thought there was something wrong with her, or that her parents wished for another child to replace her, the suffering must have been acute. Brian’s hilarious sense of humor must have helped them all through some pretty dire times, and it serves this memoir wonderfully as he unfolds their lives bit by bit.
What begins as a funny story morphs into something far more serious and personal. But the funny is a thread throughout and it illuminates the narrative, rather than distracts us. Brian’s wit holds our hand as we walk through some very dark times for them all. It is always present and never flippant, and create the perfect frame for this compelling and poignant story about a life. It could be anyone’s life – yours, mine, anyone’s at all. Although it was and probably still is difficult, it made me feel that perhaps I too could navigate my own mental health and those of my family with as much grace and understanding as Brian. One could only hope!
Therapist Zero is a very funny, profoundly personal and gorgeously wrought epic tale of survival and love in one family’s battle with mental illness. It really was absolutely brilliant! Bravo!
https://www.brian-leonard.com
https://www.usfca.edu/faculty/ken-sonkin
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