A few sad-looking cardboard boxes. A budget water cooler off to the side, silent, unburbling. A low cushioned stool. At the back of the tiny stage, a campy cross between a theatre curtain and drapery fit for a palliative care home. Everything padded in dusky mint and mustard tones.

Come to think of it, the room really was padded to an unusual degree – even the floor was a pocked in a pale velvet green. Perhaps Nathan Burmeister’s design could’ve been taken as a hint for how marvellously insane – yet at the same time, richly comforting – the one-man show that opened its season with Griffin would prove.

End Of., Griffin Theatre Company. Photo © Brett Boardman

Ash Flanders is the winsomely garrulous artist who penned and stars in this deeply personal and exceedingly droll play about, well, himself. As Flanders volunteers: theatre is how he processes whatever is bothering him at a particular moment in his life. Years ago, with current Griffin Artistic Director and CEO, Declan Greene, he purged this impulse via their queer theatre company, Sisters Grimm. At the time of writing End Of., what was bothering...