Jonas Müller Regrets Writing this F*cking Masterpiece

Jonas Müller is not here. He's a mask, a photograph, a diary entry. Dutchman Tim Honnef has been asked by a girl to tell his story. She's so pretty, he cannot refuse.

It transpires that his subject is a paradoxical mix of agoraphobic and stalker. He has fallen for a childhood friend and won't let her go. He tracks her social media accounts, he writes her poems.

It's deeply creepy, though it's packaged as something beautiful. And the deeper resonance of this tale—which Honnef reads almost entirely from a script—never becomes clear. He’s not a bad storyteller by any means, and at times it's an almost hypnotic experience. But the content is an ill-conceived mess.

Lame attempts at audience participation lead nowhere. "What do you do when you receive a compliment?" he asks us. People fidget awkwardly and try to avoid his gaze. I felt genuinely sorry for those put on the spot.

There is the germ of some good ideas here. The notion of a man retelling the story of one who cannot speak for himself. The implications of a book written for a girl whose discovery of it could jeopardise a romance. But by the end we’re no closer to discovering whether Jonas Müller is the last of the true romantics, or belongs in prison. He remains completely enigmatic and out of reach. This show is many things, but a masterpiece is stretching it.