_{Cover Image: Day (After Day) In The Life Of The Useless. Image Supplied.}

Day (After Day) In The Life Of The Useless

By Will O’Mahony

Black Swan State Theatre Company

Until 20 September 2026

Middle-aged Pete was engaged, then dumped by his fiancée; employed, then out of work. If he were a spawning salmon swimming upstream, he’d be the unlucky fish that lands squarely in the bear’s paws while the rest leap past.

In this new commission for Black Swan, actor-playwright Will O’Mahony spins an elaborate yarn around a person for whom life seems to slip a turd underfoot at every turn. O’Mahony also steps into the lead role of Pete, deftly modelling a puzzled look and a passive stance that radiates defeat.

All of which sounds like a downer, although the play’s upside is a parade of characters offering comical advice. In a frenzied series of tableaux, we watch Pete’s girlfriend (Tess Bowers) shred his manhood, his best mate (Nathaniel Langworthy) talk him into joblessness, his mother (Catherine Moore) feign indifference and his mother’s lover (Steve Le Marquand) offer drugs. Other characters include boot-wearing delinquent Seth (Langworthy) and Pete’s therapist (Le Marquand), both of whose advice leads Pete deeper into debt and damage control.

An electronic screen dominates the right-hand side of the stage, flashing up chapter titles for each comedy of errors, but by the time we reach the fortieth chapter, the effect has palled. Bowers, Langworthy, Le Marquand and Moore are an accomplished quartet of actors with brilliant comic timing, carrying off rapid costume changes and pratfalls with aplomb.

But this play is as perplexing as it is amusing in parts. It is described as “an inverted romantic comedy … that explores technology, isolation, and human problems”. Yet when Pete starts believing in AI-driven overlords, the play begins to creak under the strain of its ambition.

Conspiracy theories are almost always unconvincing and boring, and Pete’s capture in a dystopian clinic called Extinity feels weak. An automaton-like assistant asks him to “pretend to laugh” or “pretend to cough”, yet we have just witnessed endless scenes in which Pete, entirely unprompted by AI, has frantically pretended at every turn. Pete’s problems appear to be wholly man-made, mainly at the hands of unkind and all-too-human frenemies.

There are dollops of insight woven into O’Mahony’s witty one-liners, and director Adam Mitchell leads a sterling creative team, including set designer Fiona Bruce, Rhiannon Walker’s pert and eye-catching costumes, and video and sound design by Mark Haslam and Ash Gibson Greig.

The production’s latter section offers a different pace and more dramatic interest, replacing the hyperactive mood and electronic scoreboard with something richer. We witness a superbly choreographed fight scene and allusions to poet Emily Dickinson’s profound isolation.

Inside this play is a cautionary tale about making people and their feelings redundant, a phrase that these days is synonymous with AI. O’Mahony is onto something when he conjures with the term “useless”. It is benign when applied to an object that doesn’t work, but dangerous when applied to human beings. Entire regimes have been built on the belief that certain people no longer serve a purpose.

But linking AI to human suffering is tricky. Tackling such a topic onstage is like trying to pin down an elusive, often undetectable force. Who among us knows exactly who is behind AI, whether it is dictating our social media content or listening in to our calls?

In the program notes, O’Mahony observes that he wants to believe AI will never truly be able to recreate compelling art. The more credible and entertaining scenes in his own play confirm that he is on firmer ground when exploring the glorious muddle of human behaviour.

Day (After Day) In The Life Of The Useless