After a sell-out debut at Theatre Works’s secondary space last year, Chris Patrick Hansen’s play about a misogynistic online community opens the 2026 season in the main theatre.

This time, Blackpill is “bigger, bolder and better than ever before”, according to the marketing, and now called Blackpill: Redux. Creator-director Hansen notes in the program that the “show is more ambitious, large-scale and daring than before”, including a larger cast and longer script.

The play’s title is explained at the outset, via text on a screen upstage. In the “manosphere”, men and boys who accept mainstream views about society have taken the metaphorical blue pill.

Red-pill types are convinced the world is actually biased against the majority of men, because women reject them in favour of alpha males. This ideology is taken to the extreme by those who pop the proverbial black pill; for them suicide or violence are the only options.

We meet Eli, a young man sacked because of dating-app messages he sent to a woman called Carina. Angry and at a loose end, he’s lured into an online community of incels (involuntary celibates). Appearing in the flesh on stage, they are led by a figure wearing a stylised black wolf mask. He goads Eli into getting angry and making Carina pay for forwarding those messages to his employer.

Blackpill: Redux. Marketing image supplied

Different cast members play this wolfish character, whose voice is so aggressively amplified and modulated it’s often difficult to understand. That’s problematic, as his dialogue is crucial to Blackpill’s slow reveal of how such insidious cult-like communities draw in and radicalise vulnerable men and boys.

This audio technology failed at one point on opening night, so the play was paused and lights came on for a few minutes. Oddly, it was a relief, as the 70 minutes prior to interval increasingly drags.

The new, longer script is probably a mistake. This two-hour play would benefit from an edit – back to something like its tighter original version (which I did not see, but understand was 90 minutes with no interval).

Eli’s fall is nevertheless revealing and credibly portrayed by Oliver Tapp with an underlying gentleness that’s increasingly ruffled by resentment and frustration.

Aside from conversations with the wolf-like figure, key interactions showing his descent through the circles of hell include those with HR’s Gemma (Natasha Bowers), who is all false positivity; Eli’s brother (Conagh Punch), whose concern only goes so far; and Carina (Eleanor Golding), though tellingly that’s often not so much interaction as Eli virtually harassing her.

The cast of 12 also gather for energetic, synchronised gym class interludes, which evolve into stylised violence, and satirical moments including being masked up as various beta males (such as the sign guy from Love Actually).

Their massed movement (directed by Sian Quinn Dowler) is effective on Josh McNeill’s sparse set, which centres on that screen. Frequently showing and sometimes blurring Eli’s online life, it’s suspended as if by the numerous cables snaking out of it.

This screen’s sinister form recalls The Matrix films (the blissfully ignorant blue pill / harsh-reality red pill scenario’s origin). Jacques Cooney Adlard’s sombre onscreen design and lighting enhance the dark, dangerous, anti-establishment mood, as does Paracosm’s sound.

Blackpill: Redux has plenty of powerful elements, but that power is diluted by the script’s padding. Points are blunted and pacing falters. Sometimes less is more.

Blackpill: Redux continues at Theatre Works, Melbourne, until 17 January.