Notes From Underground

His new stage role is a far darker proposition. Adamsdale plays the nameless, strung-out antihero, in Eric Bogosian's 80 minute monologue Notes From Underground, a man who spends his days in a filthy New York bed-sit, wanking over porn and ramming cheese crackers into his cake hole for comfort, dogged by mental illness and unable to cope with the world.

If The Receipt was a fairy tale take on urban anomie, Notes, an update of the Dostoyevsky realist classic of the same name, covers much the same topics of dislocation and disassociation but from the perspective of someone driven insane by the demands of modern day life. He has been pushed to the margins of society and also possibly to homicide.

It is in the form of diary entries spanning a couple of months that you ride the rollercoaster of his illness and see his complex personality and its contradictory traits laid bare. His character is both to be pitied and to be feared and, under the deft direction of Adrian Osmond, Adamsdale conveys all these shifting impulses, splicing himself into vignettes which see him slumped near comatose one minute, ebullient and manic the next. His is an exceptionally powerful performance, never once does your attention drift from the stage.

Riddled with self loathing, this Underground man is an ego maniac who mocks the world around him, laughing at peoples' petty nature and gullibility. He craves love, but is utterly deprived of positive social interaction and so becomes even more bitter and isolated. He feels the world, represented by the TV news he never switches off, caving in on him. But he does have his grotesque releases; spying on his neighbours, over eating, excessive masturbation, self harming - and, possibly, kidnapping and killing two primary school children.

This is an unsettling production, that leaves you shell shocked, but proves what a versatile, talented actor Adamsdale is. He has a storyteller's gift of being able to hold and captivate an audience, and the skill to move easily between innovative, endearing productions like The Receipt, to embracing the grim, depressing life of a man driven over the edge by the world around him.

share Tweet