The modern day man is a strange and unusual beast, which is certainly true by the way in which Rob, played by Nic McQuillan, tells it in this one-man show, Stacy.
Rob's tale is unsurprising at first: he's an everyman, works at a call centre, lives with his brother and has had a smattering of liaisons with girls and none of them ever really amounted to much. He does however have a best friend Stacy, with whom his platonic friendship is turned upside down when they drunkenly end up sleeping together. That, however, is only the start of the story, and as it flits back and forwards as he recounts it to the audience, we get an impression of Rob, who he is and the gossamer thin lines between order and chaos.
It's hard to say what impressed me more about Stacy: the brilliance of the writing, or McQuillan's expert performance, every bit the believable FHM reading bloke. In fact I was quite confused upon entering the theatre, having turned up a couple of minutes late on account of another show running over, and was genuinely baffled at finding myself in some sort of spoken-word cum stand-up performance instead of the theatre I was expecting. However the genuinely insightful writing combined to enthrall in the delicately woven story threads which teeter between raw comedy, confusion and chilling horror.
Another masterstroke was the simplicity of the pictures projected on the background, which not only helped the audience follow the story, but also provide some of the laughs, and the cleverly deconstructed finale.