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....