Director: Donovan Graham
Performer: Peter Spring
Venue: Intimate Theatre
Until: January 27
"Underwhelming" is the most appropriate word to describe a production that I'd hoped would be brilliant but turned out to be one massive yawn.
The writer-director Donovan Graham and actor Peter Spring are recent Rhodes University drama school graduates and it shows.
That's not being facetious. It's just saying that perhaps they need to workshop their script and production a bit more and should have had some experienced outsider eye assistance.
Graham aimed to depict a suburban man caught up in his own desperate loneliness. Spring delivers that element and one feels frustrated because you can't believe someone could end up torturing himself with such an isolated existence.
We see Spring in this one-man show as Mr Mandrake, interacting with characters created in his head - even dancing with a chair - to fill the void of loneliness.
But the problem is that Mr Mandrake seems to have no past and we don't really get to know the cause of his exile into self-absorption.
Spring's performance is at times disappointingly disengaging and this comes across as someone who is performing to the stage props.
The thin script doesn't promise either on being a "dark comedy". The cricket-obsessed, braai-loving Mr Mandrake needs a serious shake-up for this show to go places.