Anish Mukherjee bookends Wasting Time with a memory: the drag of a cigarette and the despairing contemplation of the cycle he is trapped within. The hour-long show is numbing, by design. It delivers an onslaught of memories concerning the slow death of love and self-worth. It echoes the familiar rhythm of a comedy routine, but is richer and undeniably darker by virtue of its content.

Mukherjee’s trepidatious delivery does leave you wondering when you’re supposed to laugh, if at all (it is listed as comedy). However, in a world where optimism is so often prescribed as a cure-all for hardship, the unabashed and blunt presentation of these events (and their consequence) is refreshing.

Towards the end, there’s a comparatively consoling anecdote about how the warmth of drinking tea reminds him there could still be a good person inside. This raises an intriguing idea about the show: beneath its layers of despair and regret, Wasting Time suggests that pain is not endless but cyclical. Something bad, operating in equilibrium to the hope of something good. If the hope of wanting to be a good man, to be touched and to be loved, comes in equal measures to the absence of these things, perhaps that numbing cycle is ultimately worth something. Achingly raw and unapologetic, Mukherjee ultimately leaves you certain it is anything but wasting time to let ourselves feel.