Receiving a diagnosis after years of uncertainty is always a mixed bag. There’s the reassurance in putting a name to something that has shaped your life, but with that name can come further stigma, stereotype and misunderstanding from the world around you. Nonetheless, after a lengthy NHS evaluation, Edy Hurst finally has an explanation for how his mind works - ADHD Dark Wizardry.

Hurst’s Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Himself is a bubbling concoction of comedy, ritual and sincerity that boils over from his charmingly makeshift prop cauldron. The show centres on a peculiar branch of Hurst’s family tree - he is, apparently, a descendant of Elizabeth Southerns, an eighty-year-old victim of the 17th century Pendle witch trials. Hurst ties the history of this quite literal witch hunt to the more metaphorical pitchforks and torches pulled out against neurodivergent people in our day and age, and he does so not just with ready wit but also with commendable creativity.

The production value for this show is an endearing blend of well-polished structure and a charmingly haphazard DIY aesthetic. The props all have a distinctly homemade look, including an oversized tarot deck for a ludicrously morbid reading, and an industrial-sized salt circle maker Hurst has created by personally taping together thousands of sachets (with video proof) and attaching them to a roll-out reel. Yes, you can see the seams a little, but it’s because there’s so much creativity in here they’re close to bursting.

Throughout the show, the audience is encouraged to take part in various rituals, and rituals are, at the end of the day, about trying to bring something within our control. In a sense that’s true of the entire set: Hurst draws together all sorts of ephemera to make sense of his own mind, an incantation we’re all part of. Watching him flit back and forth between his varying interests without ever losing the thread feels, in the best possible way, like logging into someone else’s YouTube account and see what’s on their algorithm for the first time - all these disparate interests that cohere together on one page to form an oddly intimate insight into who this person is. Indeed, especially with Hurst’s docu-theatre style and incorporation of video segments, it reminded me of a few specific online creators. The feverish extremes taken in his research into Dutch eurodance sensations The Vengaboys call to mind Brian David Gilbert’s Unravelled series, and I saw shades of video essayist Hbomberguy both in the show’s homemade feel and balance of dark subject matter with hard cuts to self-aware silliness.

That lightness of touch, for me, is instrumental to what makes this show special. When a comedian does a show that’s so clearly About Something, there’s often a hard pivot into seriousness that, while sincere, can sometimes feel unearned. But the strongest aspect of Hurst’s analogy between witchcraft and neurodivergence is how understated it is - sometimes you don’t have to say a spell out loud for it to work. The show’s rug-pull, which I won’t spoil here, shifts the tone without neutering the funny in the process, making the spark of pathos feel totally organic. The only instance where this didn’t quite line up was right at the very end; Hurst’s extended lecture on The Vengaboys’ party album is both hysterically chaotic and impressively co-ordinated, and the final video sequence of him and his daughter dancing together in an empty community hall is a gorgeous visual metaphor for giving yourself a little grace when things fall through. But it felt like a slide was missing between the two, something to ease the transition from unbridled hyperfixation to this quiet moment between a father and child.

Then again, if my only note is “I want this to go on for longer”, it’s safe to assume this is a show worth your time. Plenty of old spells involve giving a little of yourself - a lock of your hair, a drop of your blood. Hurst has put all of himself into Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches (literally, he begins and ends in the cauldron) and he’s made his own kind of magic as a result.