When the lights come up at the beginning of The Last Incel, the audience is met with three male faces framed with hand-held frames as laptop screens shouting women-hating obscenities, aptly immersing us in the chilling setting of an incel group chat. In the middle of celebrating a birthday for one of their members (that is, thirty years of him being a virgin) a fourth attendee joins the chat, bringing the news that he not only lost his virginity the night previous, but his one-night stand has spent the night and invaded their once secret meeting. Thus, this dark comedy unfolds through a series of chaotic and unexpected events for these self-proclaimed outcasts.
With minimalist set design, props, and costumes, the witty and hilarious dialogue written and directed by Jamie Sykes is what makes The Last Incel shine. The simplicity of the former provides a clean visual slate and allows the audience to feel fully immersed in this dark corner of the internet, laying bare the vulnerability of the men hiding behind the screens. With alias names like ‘Ghost’ and ‘Cuckboy,’ removing them from a sense of their own reality, each of the men struggles to navigate the female presence that has entered their once safe and sheltered cyber space. The ensemble cast had remarkable chemistry and each gave memorable performances of extremely troubled and complex characters. Each character offered something poignant to the plot and our understanding of the incel culture they embodied.
The emotional turmoil of the characters is also explored through various moments of contemporary dance choreography that were, at times, a little drawn out, but undoubtedly added a visually dynamic and engaging dimension to the production experience. The lighting choices also add a layer of haunting mystique and almost dystopian haze to the play, which is fittingly aligned with the horrifying themes it deals with that are so dark they can, at times, feel otherworldly. For such alarming subject matter, the script offers a balanced contrast of disarming humor along with its emotional interrogation of victim complexes, sexuality, and friendship.
The Last Incel boasts a unique and daring concept, and Sykes brilliantly bridges the space between the horrors of misogynistic belief systems, the tragic rhetorics of desperation, and the loneliness behind them in an original and refreshing script that peers into the darkest wells of humanity.
The Last Incel is running until the 25th of August at 17:30 at Underbelly, Bristo Square.
Tickets can be purchased here.
Image by Dean Ben Ayre.