In Mamil, playwright Gregory Cooper presents a poignant and sharply comical look at that most polarising of species – the middle-aged man in Lycra.
Mark Hadlow plays Bryan Cook, an unscrupulous property developer who's accumulated a small fortune building leaky homes. He’s a stressed-out, self-medicating, self-loathing creep, killing himself to increase his bank balance while decreasing his golf score.
When his business and life fall apart thanks to the global financial crisis, he joins a men’s cycling group to relieve stress and get healthy. Faced with his own mortality, each ride becomes a journey of self-discovery, as Bryan sheds physical and mental baggage one hill climb at a time.
This is an exploration into the male mid-life crisis in all its lurid glory (bikes replacing sports cars is a well-known symptom of this affliction). Mamil takes swipes at the age of entitlement in the new millennium and the fallout surrounding the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.