Cameron Corcoran’s two-hander Mosquito is a grim hour of two thoroughly unpleasant characters being thoroughly unpleasant to each other. Which one is the piece’s titular bloodsucker? Both could justifiably merit the title. Lemy, a bi-polar university drop-out turned sex-worker leeches financially from her dad and emotionally from James, her Wednesday afternoon shag. She is a drug-addicted, walking, talking STI.
James (Cameron Corcoran also stars) is, for his part, a narcissistic, opportunistic womaniser with a sadistic streak who has stopped paying Lemy (Polly Waldron) for her weekly sexual services. Why? Just because he can. He the kind of manipulative parasite who justifies cheating on his wife because she will not let him have a peloton bike. Emotional car crashes rarely come as messy as this.
“Honestly, Lemy I can’t stand you. You’re ugly. You’re a fucking psycho,” James opines. You may be nodding along in agreement here. “I want to hurt you,” Lemy responds. Go for it, you may well be thinking. One supposes Corcoran is aiming at dark comedy, but the show mostly offers up the strangely unsatisfying spectacle of watching people you hate knock the stuffing out of each other.
There is a plot of sorts. Lemy follows and confronts a woman he supposes to be James’ wife. James dumps her with a broad hint she should top herself; “you know what you’re like when you haven’t taken the pills,” he says. Three years later an apparently reformed Lemy turns up on her erstwhile lover’s doorstep. She wants a job as nanny to his child, but really, she wants revenge. James’ need for regular insulin shots takes the place of Chekov’s gun here. “This is fucking insane, it’s insane, it’s insane, it’s insane,” James says at one point. He is not talking about the narrative, but he could be.
Mosquito is rescued from utter insanity by two compulsively watchable performances. Corcoran oozes toxic male entitlement as the vile account who just cannot keep his zip up. Waldron channels full-on melodrama vamp mode as the gloriously sinister Lemy.
Writer and Director: Cameron Corcoran
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