Day (After Day) in The Life Of The Useless by Black Swan State Theatre Company

Catherine Moore, Will O'Mahony, Tess Bowers
Day after Day in the Life of the Useless
Photo Credit: Daniel J Grant

My partner and I headed to the Heath Ledger Theatre on a slightly rainy evening, looking forward to watching the opening night of Black Swan State Theatre Company’s latest play - Day (After Day) in the Life of the Useless by Will O’Mahony.

We are no strangers to O’Mahony’s works – both as a playwright  (Tonsils and Tweezers) and after watching him perform in plays including HIR, Things I Know to be True, Angels in America, and Glengarry Glen Ross. In this current production he is both the playwright and lead actor.

Day (after Day)’s absurdist style had me in fits of laughter from the get go. Pete’s life starts out pretty ordinarily – with normal events and sometimes not so ideal occurrences happening to him in the course of his daily life  - he then gets hit from all fronts with various life issues – work, relationships (being dumped by his fiancee), money problems. The usual sort of issues that most of have to deal with from time to time.

But his circumstances soon spiral way out of hand – and a bizarre turn of events and forces beyond his control take over his life.

Throw in the interesting discussion theme of AI’s controlling us and having input on our decision making (without all those messy feelings that go with being human) and potentially making us redundant in our jobs  – and at just under 2 hours long (with no interval) – we have a play that is funny, insightful and relatable.

The play makes great creative use of its centrepiece – a grey solid concrete wall – and with the LED screen flashing up chapters in Pete’s life (some chapters that he definitely wish didn’t play out!) – it ticks all the boxes for being a highly entertaining great night out if you like lots of laughs of the dark comedic kind.

It is over the top and kudos goes to the five actors who didn’t miss a beat as they rapid-fired their snappy dialogue at each other. A big congrats also goes to the cast for their highly skilled performances in wearing so many hats playing each of the different characters in the story.

Day (after day) in the life of the Useless is a cracker of a play with lots of funny lines. It moves along at a brisk pace through scene after scene of Pete’s life – some moments hilarious, some embarrassingly cringe worthy and some downright “you just want to smack that guy in the head” sort of moment!

Day (after Day) in the Life of the Useless is on at the Heath Ledger Theatre of the State Theatre of WA until the 20 September.  

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