William (Josef Salvat) is about to perform for the first time in his one-man show and finds himself looking back at his life. Meg O’Connell’s script is fundamentally one-note, dwelling on the tragic in a series of monologues. They detail an-all-too familiar downward spiral: a battle with alcohol as well as the disintegration of both William’s relationship with his parents and their marriage. Salvat delivers these monologues capably and with a flat honesty, bearing his sadness with a kind of wry pride, but in spite of this and the occasional glimmer of wit, the script’s lack of variety and substance quickly starts to wear thin.The greatest triumph of the show is Salvat’s singing. The songs are simple, accompanied only by a keyboard, but Salvat’s singing voice and lyricism turn each and every one into something memorable and stirring – if this show had sold a soundtrack, I would have bought it. The quality of the music was not enough to balance out the flatness of the plot, however, so instead of lifting the show into something truly moving and memorable they merely become its only real selling point.
