There comes a time in every young man’s life when they’re told that whatever they’re doing is brilliant. We wonder who could have possibly told Mark McAuley and Derek Masterson that this project is even remotely finished and ready to be put in front of an audience. This modern-day adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman is sprawling, derivative, and unnecessarily unfocused. A low-level corporate employee spirals into obsession when he loses a work opportunity to an immigrant nepo-baby.
McAuley tries to turn the farcical short story into a denunciation of everything that’s wrong with contemporary society, from social media to unfair employment practices. Unfortunately, there is no analysis in it. Dressed in white, wearing a hospital bracelet, this unnamed man dives into a series of hate-fuelled rhetorics. The piece ends up portraying the racist and self-serving machinations of an unwell megalomaniac.
This illogical spiral comes in the shape of an inconsequential monologue. His follower count goes up, but we only see a few video posts where he does nothing worthy of reaching millions. The objective is relatively evident: the play should be an exploration of toxic masculinity, body dysmorphia, intrusive thoughts, and paranoia that leads into a titanic nervous breakdown. But the vision is unremarkable, the writing (Masterson) is vague and presumptive, and the performance (McAuley) is waspish.
At this stage there’s really nothing to celebrate in this show. The script needs to dig deeper to find what it truly wants to say. Right now, it swings between far-right propaganda and alarming controversy too dangerously. It wouldn’t be a problem if its societal critique was more decisive or transparent, but we couldn’t be sure where the creative team stands. Which is, obviously, a huge issue.
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