by Nikolai Gogol
At the 2026 Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival
Directed and Acted by
Clayton Jevne
Click image below for video excerpts
Venue 2: Wood Hall, 900 Johnson Street
Saturday, Aug. 29 5:45pm
Sunday, Aug.30 6:45pm
Friday, Sept. 4 5:30pm
Saturday, Sept 5 12:00pm
Sunday, Sept. 6 2:00pm
To purchase tickets for this show:
Tickets prices are: $16 regular & $14 for students and seniors
Diary of a Madman is considered to be one of Gogol’s greatest short stories. This tragicomedy is recognized as a sharp, bitter satire of 19th-century Russian bureaucratic society in the era of Nicholas I. Through the tragic mental breakdown of a low-ranking clerk, the story exposes a rigid class system that measures human worth strictly by rank and title. The tale centers on the life of a minor civil servant, Aksenty Ivanov (Poprishchin), and follows his descent into insanity.
Clayton Jevne has been the Artistic Director of Victoria’s (BC) Theatre Inconnu since 1987. Since 1986, he has toured 11 solo shows (covering almost 1000 performances in 6 countries) – including his internationally acclaimed One-Man Hamlet. Festival performances have included: the United Solo Festival (New York City), Festival de Sinaloa (Mexico), the Aberdeen Alternative Arts Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland). Clayton has also been directly involved in over 130 Theatre Inconnu productions in various capacities: actor, director, designer, and general manager. For the past 18 years Clayton has taught in the University of Victoria Theatre Department. Academically he holds a BFA (acting), an MFA (directing), and a PhD (actor-training curriculum development).
Falstaff****
Moscow Stations***
One-Man Hamlet****
(Edmonton Journal Ratings)
Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), was a Ukrainian-born novelist, humourist, and dramatist, whose foundational writings—such as Dead Souls and The Overcoat—shaped 19th-century realism, satire, and surrealism. His peculiar, unhappy life and his uniquely dark comic sensibility have been consistently misunderstood by posterity, with critics fiercely debating his nationality, his religious beliefs, and even his sexuality. What has never been in doubt, however, is his immense literary talent which provided a template for the absurdist, surreal streak in Eastern European literature that continues to bear fruit to this day. Along with Alexander Pushkin, he also established a literary pattern for the depiction of St. Petersburg as a city of ambiguity and even monstrosity, life in which proves untenable for many of his long-suffering protagonists.
I acknowledge with respect that this show has been developed on the ancestral territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən peoples, known today as the Xwsepsum and Songhees Nations, as well as the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, whose traditional relationship with the land continues today.
