When Daniel MacIvor pauses in the middle of a sentence to collect his thoughts, he narrates the pause (“long pause, long pause”), because he likes you to know that he intends a dramatic flourish. When his dinner companion wanders off-topic, he interrupts and brings the conversation back to himself. When he explains why he’s pissed off at the indifference of local critics to his second film (“what does it mean for something to be ‘so Canadian’?”), his face grows prim and matronly and he places his hands flat on the table and sighs. When he describes Lilly, his mother (“She’s 82 and weighs about 70 pounds and she’s an incredible spark plug. She drives like a demon and has the same hair colour she had in her 20s and her favourite colour is pink”), he can do so while simultaneously reading a menu, because he’s got her description memorized like it’s a speech in one of his plays. When he talks about his family back in Sydney, Nova Scotia, he puts on a twee Cape Bretoner lilt. When asked if he still has a troubled relationship with his father, he puts on a sugar-sweet choirboy’s voice and explains that Dad’s in heaven now and they see each other every night in his dreams.

Daniel MacIvor is the type of actor who is always performing, especially when he’s offstage. He claims his physical features are best suited to roles that require him to be “dull and lumpen.” As he candidly admits, “I don’t photograph very well, compared to Paul Gross.” But what sets him apart is his buzzing, neurotic self-regard. Even when he’s happy, his nostrils flare, his eyebrows arch, his thin lips look caught between a mewl and a scowl.

This lack of matinée idol looks hasn’t gotten in his way: he’s appeared in 17 films, directed two of his own (Past Perfect and Wilby Wonderful, the one dismissed by the critics), written 20 plays and acted in more than 30. He’s won two Dora Mavor Moore awards, a Chalmers and an Obie, and was nominated for a Governor General’s. But he’s still like a kid seeking approval. Or like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, terrified of losing the spotlight. He should be happy tonight, on the eve of the debut of his latest play, the cheerily titled A Beautiful View, but he has the face of a guy who’s just tasted sour milk.

He’s leaving for Columbus, Ohio, in a few days. That’s where A Beautiful View will debut, at the Wexner Centre, which has a penchant for unconventional theatre and has helped fund four of his productions. The play comes to Toronto in May, and MacIvor will tour with it around the continent for a year. He also has a book of his collected plays coming out this spring. When he finds the time, he’ll do publicity for Whole New Thing, an indie-budget, shot-in-five-weeks movie that opened in March in Canada, May in the States. When he’s not promoting the movie, he’ll start rehearsals for revivals, in Toronto, of the works he’s perhaps best known for: his solo plays Monster, House and Here Lies Henry.

It’s this trio that shows Daniel MacIvor at his one-man, amped-up, Brechtian best. Each is strikingly minimalist, with maybe a chair in the middle of the stage. The action is driven solely by his charisma and wit. In House, he plays Victor, an embittered husband. (“Now you might think I’m weird, but I’m not,” Victor explains. “I’m fucked up. There’s a fundamental difference between being weird and fucked up. You are born weird; you get fucked up. You can’t be born fucked up or get weird. You have to be born weird. I’m fucked up.”) MacIvor furiously paces the stage, berates the audience and hits them with revelations—about love, fear, hatred—that make every other play seem banal.

And yet he wants everything to change. He’s 43, and he’s having a mid-life crisis. Until now, ambition has kept him going, always travelling the world with his plays and films. He’s done well for a man who doesn’t look like Paul Gross, but he’s also left a trail of six therapists, two naturopaths and four boyfriends. He wants a more settled life. “I don’t want to find myself, 10 years from now, searching for organic fruit in Prague,” he says. So he’s shutting down his production company, Da Da Kamera. And he’s giving up his meticulously minimalist style of theatre. This will be the last time he performs those three solo shows. It’s time for something new.