Katharine James
posted 21 September 2007

From Charles Pooter through Adrian Mole to David Brent, the self-satisfied mediocrity has a rich British genealogy. It owes its roots, in part at least, to a Russian cousin, Poprischin, in Gogol's short story Diary of a Madman.

Poprischin (Christopher Tester) is a low ranking civil servant who spends his days sharpening quill ends and ogling his boss's daughter. With his career stifled by state bureaucracy and relationships stymied by a total lack of social skills, Poprischin turns diary-ward to empty his bile. The entries chart his gradual slide from repressed paranoia into pure barking madness. Eventually, having decided that he is in fact the lost King of Spain, Poprischin rebels against his oppressors and comes unpleasantly unstuck.

Fail Better have adapted Gogol's short story into a monologue. The programme notes tell us that the company has taken inspiration from Samuel Beckett and that their productions concentrate as much on the visual as the textual. This is promising. The diary format and first person narrative convert well to the stage and there are indeed a couple of nice visual touches. Scenes are separated by Tester tearing sheets of a large day-a-date calendar and as Poprischin loses touch with reality, the dates revealed get wackier and wackier (123rd Marvember etc…). There’s also some imaginative use of a desk light and a great 'cloak' with a quill feather ruff, which Tester dons in the second half of the play.

Ultimately though, the acting and direction are underwhelming. Their textual concentration has lapsed and the character work is thin. Tester spends the first half hour all OCD, twitchily tidying his room and making sure he doesn’t look in the same place twice (he has also been forbidden from looking at the audience). This, Tester and Jonathan Heron (director) assume, is sufficient. It’s not. It’s the trappings and the suits of paranoid repression without the substance. It is consequently extremely difficult to engage with. The second section is better. But that’s because the writing is more overtly entertaining and it’s quite easy to act loopy. Tester has also stopped space staring and begins to acknowledge (and work for) his audience.

For all their desire to celebrate Beckett and his ‘exquisite minimalism’, the company's production is unexceptional. Let’s hope that when they try again they do indeed, Fail Better.

Run over.