REVIEW: F*cking Men, King's Head ✭✭✭✭

Euan Brockie and Jonathan McGarrity in F*cking Men. Photo: Christopher Tribble F*cking Men

King's Head Theatre

4 Stars

F*cking Men by Joe DiPietro returns to the King’s Head this month as part of the theatre’s Gay Theatre Festival. Playwright Joe DiPietro has taken Schinitzler’s La Rhonde and loosely adapted the play to the relationships and character types that can be found in the gay community. Geoffrey Hyland, takes the play that runs at just under 100 minutes without interval and stages it in traverse at the King’s Head with enormous success.

There’s a slender thread that links each of the scenes to each other coming full circle at the end. Various types are represented The Playwright, The Student, The Married Guy and his partner, The Soldier, The Graduate Student, The Actor, The Porn Star, The Journalist and The Escort. Each of the shows scenes takes two of the characters, one of whom has been introduced in the plays previous scene and offers an insight into the characters based on their interaction.

DiPietro’s character studies vere dangerously close to stereotypes at times but ultimately the truth of the characters and their circumstances win out. There’s drama and humour aplenty, but DiPietro is skilled at lulling the audience into a sense of false comfort through the use of sex, leaving us to realise the loneliness and despair that some of these characters feel.

Harper James and Chris Willis. Photo: Christopher Tribble

F*cking Men features an ensemble of terrific actors. Standout performances included Harper James as The Soldier, a man whose immediate reaction to gay sex is violence, a reaction he eventually overcomes to enter into a relationship. Euan Brockie plays The Student, a young man who is enthralled with the whole idea of men and sex, there’s no waiting, he’s impatient, impetuous and wanting to experience the now. Haydn Whiteside is the Porn Star, a lonely individual who wants love and company. Johnathon Neal is The Actor, supposedly straight and married but secretly not, until he is forced to acknowledge an indiscretion and Richard Stemp as The Journalist who rounds out the evening as the more mature man who having lost his partner moves beyond his grief to help Chris Willis’s Escort. The latter scene was particularly moving and worth the price of admission alone.

Hyland’s staging makes use of a series of benches that form tables, chairs and beds. Each transition sees these manoeuvred into different configuations, I’m hoping that some of these transition times might be reduced as the run goes on to enable a freer flow between the scenes. Hyland uses each section of the stage effectively to create cruising grounds, bedrooms, broom cupboards, and a sauna.

Artistic Director, Adam Spreadbury Maher is to be congratulated on yet another successful production at the King’s Head. In a pre-curtain speech Spreadbury Maher asked the audience to help keep the venue functioning through financial support. It would be a great loss to lose one of London’s premier fringe venues, oh and some air conditioning might not go astray!

A great night's entertainment. Highly recommended.

F*cking Men runs at the King's Head Theatre until 26 September 2015