This review below comes from her run last year and first appeared in the London Evening Standard.

Dawn French’s show features an unusual sight. The 58-year-old alone onstage. For three decades French usually appeared with Jennifer Saunders, but their amicable separation has inspired her. This autobiographical solo debut finds her on captivating, charismatic form.

Thirty Million Minutes — the title is the amount of time French has been alive — starts slowly. There are few initial laughs as she describes her childhood, moving around due to her father being in the RAF. 

But the humour kicks in with a cheeky anecdote about an early meeting with the Queen Mother, as archive news footage onscreen confirms her account.

Gradually French, in frilly black dress and biker boots, gathers momentum as she remembers regularly being left on the beach for hours when living in Cyprus aged six. Unthinkable now, particularly without sun cream. While some stories feel over-scripted French is always a commanding performer, whether recalling how her father gave her “armour” by telling her how beautiful she was, breaking into a bum-wiggling MC Hammer shuffle, or playfully revealing that she has dubbed her breasts “Ant and Dec”.

The tone changes after the interval, however, when she discusses her father’s suicide. French’s live delivery segues into her prerecorded voice, wondering what went through his mind. “Did you weep?” she asks.

This was undoubtedly a traumatic turning point. But that armour has stood her in good stead, as she discusses fighting press intrusion, coping with health scares and relationship setbacks. Even divorcing Lenny Henry was relatively painless. Having donned her “love goggles” again she is now happily remarried.

Director Michael Grandage extracts a heartfelt performance. The physical clowning is fun yet it is the words that linger. 

Thirty Million Minutes is dominated by a death, but it is ultimately about drinking every last drop of life.