Diary of a Sentimental Killer
After five solo shows in a row, this may have been a monologue too far for me, but I don’t think it was simply a Fringe overdose of the form that made watching Diary of a Sentimental Killer such hard, energy-sapping work.
A 40-something assassin’s service has been getting shoddy since he fell in love with a 24-year-old “French fox” and opted to break his profession’s cardinal rule of solitude. When his lover falls for another man while on holiday, it provokes a crisis of confidence – and, even worse, curiosity – in the killer.
Who exactly is his latest assignment and does the man deserve to die? The questions lead to further mistakes on the job and, with the prospect of a dull, enforced retirement looming, a twist in the tail that sees his two preoccupations merge.
It’s a tense, globe-trotting story – albeit with a low shoot-‘em-up factor (to the disappointment of the teenage boys in the row opposite me) – but, no matter how often the killer pours his heart out to the man in the mirror “who looks like me”, sympathy for this devil is in short supply. The sense of inaction is magnified by Italian actor-director Gianpiero Borgia’s slow and heavily accented delivery and his decision to remain seated throughout.
