Blackpill

Part of the TAHI Festival of Solo Performance, Blackpill is a confronting verbatim play taken from the online forums of the manosphere where incels preach their violent and dogmatic ideology, express profound hatred for women, and share their pervasive loneliness. 

Anyone who has watched Adolescence or Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere on Netflix will have some idea of what to expect. However, Rachel McLean’s play goes to a deeper level of toxic masculinity – and emasculinity – by taking her text straight from the pernicious anonymity of the internet. What results is a brutal exposé of a sub-culture that is extraordinarily warped in its view of life.

Zachary Klein is a devastatingly effective performer. Starting with simulated masturbation, he brilliantly embodies the diverse facets of the incel world from the clichéd basement-dweller to the looksmaxxing poser to the severely depressed, socially isolated loner contemplating suicide as the only solution to his entirely joyless existence. It is this last persona that hits hardest, along with the realisation that these men hate each other, and themselves, as much as – or maybe more – than they hate women.

Rachel McLean’s direction is as accomplished as her scriptwriting, making the visual presentation of a solo performance constantly interesting. And I’m always excited when I see Rebekah de Roo’s name on the crew list. Her production and AV design more than meet my high expectations. A multi-panelled, monochrome screen behind Klein becomes a canvas for a complex and ever-changing, equally monochrome kaleidoscope of imagery, helpful definitions of the language of inceldom, distorted videos of Klein, and hate-filled rants from the chatrooms. Lucas Neal’s lighting design is also superb with highly effective use of practical lamps and subtle colour tones to complement and highlight the action. Ben Kelly’s liminal sound design rounds out the production’s netherworld between reality and the limbo of cyberspace.

Like its glossy Netflix cousins, Blackpill is blisteringly truthful, painfully revealing, and will leave you wondering where and why it all went so horribly wrong.