Los Angeles Theatre Review: Diary of a Madman

Poprishchin (Ilia Volok) wakes up in slow motion on the nearly bare black box stage of Actor’s Circle Theatre (which has a nicely raked 30-seat (or so) house comprised of converted pews).  Lying on the floor, the title oddball greets his 19^th-century asylum cell of one stool and a rickety, taped up convalescent chair converted into a toilet.  Crumpled pages of his journal shower him, as rain is heard off in the background, and he begins to unravel the yarn of just how he found himself residing in the loony bin in an untied straight jacket.  Poprishchin is a low-ranking civil servant who sneers at the petty bureaucracy of the Russian Empire.  He fancies himself the King of Spain, as he pines over the daughter of his superior.  The unreliable narrator hallucinates that two dogs write love letters to each other, while he bestows a greatness upon his averageness that only his imagination can provide and feels he deserves.  The absurdist story is never alienating as it depicts the unraveling of a man wrapped up in his own prideful entitlement and social rank.  He is a man driven insane by his ego’s need for more, while choosing to operate within society’s parameters.  Resentful, his unimaginative approach to life traps him inside of the colorful and seductive world of his mind.

Volok and director Eugene Lazarev adapted the Nikolai Gogol short story "Diary of a Madman" for the stage earlier this year.  Volok dances with the various sound effects as his seemingly straightforward story unfolds.  The actor’s finely-tuned characterization is fueled by his workhorse energy.  The helicopter blades he forms from twirling his long sleeves couldn’t begin to cool off the sweat permeating his beige outfit.  Poprishchin surreptitiously exits his confines after he has finished his 80-minute monologue, begging the question: was he really crazy or are we for believing him?  Diary just got extended and will play two more times at the Actor’s Circle: Sunday, June 17^th @ 10 PM and Friday, June, 22^nd@ 2:30 PM.  You can buy tickets here.  And check out its website here.