Mr Incredible

Writer Camilla Whitehill has already expressed that putting a heterosexual, cismale character on stage for an hour in order to comment on male entitlement may seem counter-productive. After all, no matter how much an author attempts to deconstruct the Great White Male, we’re still left with a tossbag bloke moaning about rejection.

This central conflict is one that is acutely difficult to accept in Mr Incredible, a one-man show about Adam (Alistair Donegan) who rants to us about why his girlfriend, Holly, left him. He ticks every box in the bigot column: patronises Holly; tells her to take a job she doesn’t want because it’s what grown-ups do: victimises himself; and glues back together his fragile masculinity.

The play is indeed an indictment of toxic male entitlement, performed with perfect smugness and sickly nice-guy humour by Donegan. How close, however, does it tread to putting a racist character on stage to demonstrate the fact that racism exists? At the end of it, you’re still providing a platform for that poisonous dogma, rather than challenging or dismantling it. How practical is it for us to continue centring male entitlement on stage?

Still, Sarah Meadows’ meticulous direction, which gradually unravels Adam’s underlying misogyny, is immaculately paced. Donegan also gives an utterly convincing performance–much to his dismay, I’d imagine–and transforms from likeable to downright despicable. Of course, there’s an irony in the very act of writing this review, which replicates and refracts the unhelpful male “take” to the point where the cycle remains unbroken.