"The Hedgehog"

Genre: Introspective Dark Comedy

Setting: A Home

Approximate Running Time: 20 minutes

Characters:

• The Hedgehog: (Male, late-60s to 70s)
• The Old Flame: (Female)
• The Colleague: (Male or Female)
• The School Friend: (Male)
• The Character at Lectern: (Male or Female)

A Psychological Case Study: The Hedgehog

At its heart, The Hedgehog is not simply a comedy about a man writing his final words; it is an exploration of what happens when the ego collides with mortality. The central figure spends his final days constructing a personal myth, a self-written script for posterity. Yet the more he writes, the more his past intrudes, and with it the distortions and defenses that shaped his life.

From a psychological perspective, this character is wrestling with cognitive dissonance. He has been diagnosed with a terminal illness — a fact he never directly acknowledges on stage — but rather than face the vulnerability and fear that diagnosis brings, he throws himself into performance. He clings to an inflated version of himself, constructing a grand finale that will, he believes, outshine his failings. This is a textbook case of narcissistic defense: when confronted with loss or mortality, the ego responds by amplifying its own importance, refusing to allow weakness or imperfection to surface.

The memory fragments — the old flame, the school friend, the colleague — are crucial here. They act as intrusions, surfacing unbidden like half-remembered dreams or critical inner voices. Each one begins as a stylised caricature, echoing the inflated way he wishes to see himself, only to slip and reveal harsher truths: the flame who recalls his drunkenness, the colleague who mutters about deadlines missed, the school friend who mocks his fragility. These fragments are not literal hauntings but projections of his own psyche — his superego and his critics made flesh. They are the reality he cannot fully repress.

The comedy arises from the tension between these two versions of reality: his flamboyant, self-aggrandising narrative and the fractured, contradictory recollections that leak in. He performs grandeur, yet the audience sees the cracks. The laughter is bittersweet: we recognise in him the human urge to make sense of our lives by editing, exaggerating, or erasing parts of the past.

What makes The Hedgehog poignant is the ambiguity of its ending. As he fades and his words are read at the lectern, the audience is left to wonder whether he achieved clarity or remained trapped in distortion. Was his final gesture an act of repentance, or simply another flourish of ego? The play does not resolve this; instead, it mirrors the unresolved nature of our own lives. Few of us achieve tidy narratives.

In psychological terms, The Hedgehog is a study of ego at the threshold of mortality — a man defending against despair with humour, bravado, and delusion. The fragments are his past breaking through denial, reminding us that self-image is never a solitary construction but shaped in the tension between how we see ourselves and how others see us.

And therein lies its power. To watch The Hedgehog is to laugh at his absurdity, but also to recognise our own small vanities, our own myths and distortions. It is a comedy, yes, but one with teeth, pricking us, reminding us that the stories we tell about ourselves may not be the ones others remember.

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