This solo mask performance deals with toxic masculinity in a humorous and profound way. In a wonderfully funny monologue, the audience accompanies George on his journey through male vulnerability and repressed aggression. A timely response to the #MeToo movement, George negotiates a tangled web of self-deception, anger and insecurity that reveals his increasingly darker side. Surreal, exuberant and slightly sinister, the play sheds a delicate light on how destructive alpha male culture can be.

George, a white, middle-class, middle-aged manager, is desperate for female approval. But just as he seems to be closing in on the object of his desire, he gets caught up in a maelstrom of denial, anger and self-doubt. Oscillating between love and loss, death and birth, he is denied access to his deeper self.

Director and co-writer Lee Delong has transformed George’s anxieties and traumas into a raw investigation of contemporary gender norms using dark comedy. Co-author Ralf Wetzel wears a mask that fits him like a glove. It has a transfixing power and sometimes one forgets that it’s a mask, so much so that Wetzel plays two distinct characters – male and female – with only one mask. Negotiating a labyrinth of increasingly comic situations, George is peeled away like an onion to reveal a surprising truth.

Dramaturgy: Ralf Wetzel and Lee Delong
Director: Lee Delong
Actors: Ralf Wetzel
Masks: Stephen John Cooper