DIARY OF A MADMAN
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These stories profoundly influenced the next generation of Russian writers; Dostoyevski once quipped that he and his cohorts all emerged from “under Gogol’s “Overcoat.”‘ They are still remarkably fresh and funny–largely because office work is still as mind numbing today as it was 160 years ago.
Of these tales, none is more ripe for stage adaptation than “Diary of a Madman.” Structured as a series of monologues disguised as journal entries, the story could easily be translated verbatim to the stage as a tragicomic one-man show with no damage to the work. And the protagonist is just the kind of flighty, unstable, highly emotional, incredibly eccentric character that any actor worthy of his craft would love to sink his teeth into. In fact, at least three stage adaptations of this story have been produced in this country in the past 30 years, including one by Brecht scholar Eric Bentley.
Pearson’s work in the rough-and-tumble world of Renaissance fairs, where his stage is a mud pit and his competition is everything else going on around him, shows in the expert way he grabs the audience’s attention from the first word. He keeps us riveted to him, worrying about his fate even as he slips into a hilariously delusionary world in which dogs write each other letters and mad clerks are suddenly crowned king of Spain.
