Day (After Day) In the Life of the Useless is an episodic comedy which charts the dissolution of the life of its protagonist, Pete, an unremarkable office drone whose girlfriend leaves him, he loses his job and any affection he had for his parents, discovers his friends are self-interested fools, and falls into increasingly ludicrous semi-criminal acts to repay his growing debts.

Pete is played by Will O’Mahony, who authored the script and collaborates with Adam Mitchell to direct. Despite Pete’s growing sense of despair, the production maintains an even pace, each of the 35 scenes chronicling yet another indignity to which he is subjected, or foolish choice he makes.

Will O’Mahony in Day (After Day) In The Life Of The Useless. Photo © Daniel James Grant

While consistently funny and well written, the basic conceit of the piece is not novel, drawing on Absurdist literature and other works which revolve around the misadventures of a Woody-Allen-esque schlemiel, be this in Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1925) or Martin Scorsese’s very loose filmic 1985 adaptation of it as After Hours. O’Mahony borrows directly from Woody Allen the teasing practice of projecting before each scene a quotation which will soon be spoken on stage. O’Mahony therefore challenges us to read each scene in light of these pithy epigrams, often with amusing results.

The production is buoyed by design and costuming from Fiona Bruce and Rhiannon Walker, with eye-popping blocks of strong colours set against a raised grey mass which functions as a desk, backdrop and later as the fateful cliff shore where Pete ponders suicide.

Catherine Moore and Tess Bowers in Day (After Day) In The Life Of The Useless. Photo © Daniel James Grant

This renders Pete’s world as similar in appearance to 1980s computer games, which is in fact a hint as to some of what may be going on in this absurd world. Like the character in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Breakfast of Champions, Pete suspects that all those around him may really be unfeeling robots, designed to test and torment him.

Much of the fun of the production comes from the larger than life characters Pete encounters, all played by Tess Bowers, Nathaniel Langworthy, Steve Le Marquand and Catherine Moore. Le Marquand, for example, shifts from Pete’s world weary, emotionally flat father to the effusively annoying lover of Pete’s mother, and then to an unpredictable street tough who goes by the moniker of Pigeon.

The bright yellow check suit worn by Pigeon is one of many pop cultural references scattered throughout, in this case alluding to the boxing club outfits from Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen (2019).

Will O’Mahoney and Steve Le Marquand in Day (After Day) In The Life Of The Useless. Photo © Daniel James Grant

The play opens with Pete standing at the cliff thinking about ending it all, and we return to this scene towards the conclusion. As with everything Pete tries to do, he fails even at suicide, where he encounters a CEO – Le Marquand again – who asks Pete to hurry up, or get out of the way, so that Le Marquand can throw himself off the rocks. Pete and the CEO swap places, and so someone else dies in Pete’s stead.

O’Mahony’s script abandons this neat circularity however by following the cliff face sequence with several more scenes, rather dissipating any tensions built up through the dramatic arc. Indeed, as played by O’Mahony, Pete never becomes particularly passionate, energised or frenetic. He is a passive vehicle acted upon by the world, and I would have liked a bit more drive in the performance of his struggle.

Nevertheless as a premiere production of a new script by a rising local artist, this is an exciting development for Black Swan Theatre and O’Mahony, and I eagerly await what might come next.

Day (After Day) In the Life of the Useless plays in the Heath Ledger Theatre, Perth until 20 September.