A one-man musical about the gap between how men are taught to cope and how much that actually costs them. He shows up. He continues. He sounds fine. The cracks are quieter than you expect.
One Missed Call is a one-man musical about men's mental health, but not in a broad awareness-campaign sense. It is something far more specific. It is about emotional suppression. About the scripts men are handed from boyhood. About loneliness that looks like competence, and shame that wears the mask of strength.
Set over the course of a single day, the show follows one man through a series of ordinary phone calls: work, money, parenting, friendship. He is polite, functional, reassuring. He sounds fine. He is not fine. The audience watches the ground shift beneath him in real time: a collapse that barely looks like one.
The show is not a lecture and it is not a misery parade. It is honest, recognisable, and funny in places, because real life does not arrive in one emotional register. The humour gives relief, but also truth. The audience is allowed to lower their guard before they realise how hard it has landed.
At its core, One Missed Call asks a simple but devastating question: what happens when a man has spent his whole life being told to hold it together, and one small moment, one missed call, becomes the thing that finally breaks the surface?
The show was written following an ADHD diagnosis at 39, which directly unlocked the ability to translate music from imagination to piano for the first time. It is the piece that became possible once that gap finally closed. Personal in its origin, urgent in its purpose.
Sometimes the best way to understand a show is to meet the person making it. This is Chris talking about 1 Missed Call, where it came from, and why it matters.
The show is personal. It is honest. It does not come from a comfortable distance from its subject. It comes from inside it.
Watch, then help us get it to Edinburgh.
The Edinburgh Fringe is the most important launching pad in British theatre. It is not cheap to get on that stage. This is not a production with investors or Arts Council backing. It is a personal, mission-driven project being built from the ground up.
49 seats. 6 nights. An intimate run at a brilliant venue. Every pound raised goes directly into making that happen. Nothing more, nothing less.
49 seats. 6 nights. No investors. No Arts Council. Just the show, the audience, and people like you making it possible.
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Chris Duke is a Scottish writer, broadcaster and performer. As a radio presenter, podcaster and long-form interviewer, he has spent years building a reputation for conversations that feel honest, unguarded and human: the kind of conversations that let people say difficult things out loud.
1 Missed Call is the most personal thing he has made. It is rooted in his own understanding of what it means to be a man trying to function, continue and hold it together while quietly falling apart. The show does not sit at a comfortable distance from its subject. It comes from inside it.
Diagnosed with ADHD at 39, Chris found that medication finally allowed him to translate music from his head to the piano, something that had never previously been possible. That breakthrough directly unlocked the creation of this show. One Missed Call is, in the most literal sense, the piece that became possible once the gap between imagination and the page finally closed.
Lisa Duke makes her directorial debut with 1 Missed Call, bringing formal training and hard-won life experience in equal measure. Trained at The Space in Dundee with a BA (Hons) in English and Drama, her instinct for text, character and the mechanics of performance is both academic and deeply practical.
After stepping away from the industry to raise a family, Lisa returns with absolute clarity about the kind of work she wants to make: work that matters, that earns its place, and that treats its audience as intelligent adults.
Years spent supporting a loved one through mental ill health have sharpened her understanding of what this subject demands: precision, emotional honesty, and the courage to resist easy answers. She brings all of that to this production.
Tickets go on sale via theSpaceUK.com in spring 2026. Leave your email and we'll let you know the moment they're live.
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No investors. No grants. Just a show that needs to exist, and people willing to help get it there. Every contribution, however small, is part of the story.
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