Divorced and abandoned, ‘Boxman’ sleeps in a box in his living room. His battles with OCD and alcoholism prevent him from living a full life, until he meets Mandy, the checkout girl at ASDA. Rejuvenated, he applies for an opening at ASDA just so he can be near her, but he soon realises his determined plan might seem a tad stalkerish. In an hour-long one-man show, Ruaraidh Murray takes the role of Boxman and guides us through his love quest full of challenges and insecurities. The conversational narration offers many opportunities to make Boxman a great piece of theatre concerned with OCD, but sadly the performance lacks the fuel to hit a home-run.

Countless disorders have been subjects for performances, and perhaps one of the most overdone is OCD. The topic is not only difficult because of the danger of insensitive clichés or the possibility of generalisations, but because it’s simply has been done so many times it is nearly impossible to create anything groundbreakingly inventive with it. Boxman seems to have this problem, as neither the plot or the execution has anything new to offer.

Murray’s protagonist, although endearing, fails to connect with us. His humour is off-beat and the jokes land uncomfortably on the receiving end. Around the half-time mark the audience finally starts to laugh, but only to reward some of the more graphic jokes rather than Murray’s performance. And even though we spend all our time with Boxman, it is still difficult to pin down his character; despite his insecurities and the confessional memos he records on his dictaphone, he remains one-dimensional and poorly animated.

Unfortunately the plot of this stretched-out show doesn’t add much to the picture either. Even though the character of Boxman seems intriguing at first, the play fails to be more than a boy-meets-girl story. In between we are left with a rather confusing Speak and Spell game, but the idea is not developed enough to really tie the narrative together. Towards the end we see moments of backstory that deal with the themes of family and childhood, but these seem to be latched on to the narrative rather like an afterthought. The highlight of the play is probably the ending, where Murray does a great job at exposing Boxman’s real name and his empty dictaphone, but this raw reality comes too late in the show to trigger my emotional response. It is a shame, because Murray does have charisma; it is just not enough to make this self-narrated piece refreshing.

Boxman is playing at The Vaults as part of the VAULT Festival until the 28 February. For more information and tickets, see the VAULT Festival website.